[ale] Stupid smart phone

[Alex Carver]

Oh they're very clever about it, too.  Despite DHCP giving it DNS 
servers that I control and despite the manual network configuration 
exposing only two DNS server entries it actually has Google's DNS 
servers hardcoded as a third server.  So if I tried to blacklist 
anything at my own DNS server, it would get around that by querying 
Google directly.

I spotted that when I first got the TV and put a sniffer on it before I 
let it out into the wild.  It was querying 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 even 
though I had manually configured it for my local DNS. When I let the 
sniffer pass the DNS queries through it still used Google servers to 
handle Vizio lookups to the mothership.  Evidently the user configured 
DNS is only for the extra applications like Netflix, Hulu, etc. while 
the core spyware uses only Google for DNS.

On 2021-12-11 22:42, Bob Toxen wrote:
> GOOD FOR YOU to block it from spying on you and tattling!
> 
> Bob
> 
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 10:44:30AM -0800, Alex Carver via Ale wrote:
>> I've got a two year old Vizio that has RCA L/R audio outputs on the back.
>>
>> Of course the TV does *NOT* have a built-in battery-backed RTC.  It wants to
>> set its time every time you hit the power button via NTP and there's no
>> manual way to set the time either.  So the firewall rewrites its NTP
>> requests to point to my internal NTP server and blocks all other traffic so
>> it can't call home like every other TV does.
>>
>> On 2021-12-11 02:19, Steve Litt via Ale wrote:
>>> Jim Kinney via Ale said on Fri, 10 Dec 2021 18:22:04 -0500
>>>
>>>> Other days it's more like the vcr clock always
>>>> blinking "12:00" for lack of a $0.10 rc circuit to keep the clock
>>>> alive during a power blink.
>>>
>>> Speaking of for lack of, how many have noticed that oh-so-modern TVs
>>> no longer have headphone jacks. You remember headphone jacks --- you
>>> just patch the headphone jack to the line-in of any amplifier and bang,
>>> you've got sound, and the sound is controllable by your TVs volume
>>> control.
>>>
>>> But noooooo. That's just soooo *legacy*. Instead of a 30 cent
>>> headphone jack, my Samsung TV has one of those silly "toslink" infrared
>>> fiberoptics. So you have to buy a fiberoptic cable for about $15.00,
>>> and then a $40 fiberoptic to line level converter, from which I can use
>>> patch cords to go into my amp's line in. Because I don't have a $500.00
>>> "home theater" system --- but rather have a $30.00 20 watt amp that's
>>> tiny and works just great for TV sound.
>>>
>>> Well, after trying for days to get the toslink plus adapter to work, I
>>> read that many Samsungs just don't work with those adapters. For lack
>>> of a 30 cent headphone jack. Oh, and of course, the Samsung's built-in
>>> speakers are guaranteed to be indecipherable, with various oscillations
>>> at frequencies guaranteed to obscure speech.
>>>
>>> A couple weeks ago we went out and bought about the cheapest TV on the
>>> market. Picture's not all that great but it had what we really wanted,
>>> a headphone jack. Now we hear great sound that we can raise and lower
>>> with the TV remote. Life is good.
>>>
>>> SteveT
>>>
>>> Steve Litt
>>> Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
>>> Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
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>>
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