Google TV is exactly the kind of myopically-designed device you want to use if you just love the idea of digital voyeurism. I’m not just talking about Google’s infamously horrific privacy practices such as famously sharing user location data even when disabled, geofence-based warrants allowing dragnet approaches to law enforcement, and its claims that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in your Gmail account. No, this time, Google TV personally pissed me off.
Google TV shares your YouTube watch history with your entire family not only default but even when you explicitly tell it to keep your profile private! I can’t put into words how disrespectful this is. Let me show you how broken Google TV is for the shared TV use case.
Picture this offensive bullshit: You setup a new Google TV device. You’re impressed with the fluid animations and hand-holding setup process with the companion phone app. So far so good. You already have a Google account after all, don’t you? It just makes sense that your online life ought to extend to your television, or so you thought.
But, here’s where Google reveals a complete lack of respect for user privacy that I’ve come to expect from a company that largely survives by leaning on its advertising business with an insatiable appetite for data collection in order to serve you the most targeted ads possible. If you turn on profile lock, an opt-in privacy setting which requires a pin to access your Google TV profile, guess what?
Profile lock does not force Google TV apps to actually use separate profiles! Any app can reach into your profile without asking permission because they have no knowledge of there being actual separate profiles on the TV. Without providing your pin or password, anybody in your household can walk up to the family room TV, open YouTube, and browse your watch history. That’s because Google TV profiles are a tacked-on feature that doesn’t actually segregate your data from other signed-in users. This would already be pretty bad on its own because the privacy lock setting is grossly misrepresenting what it can actually do.
So, there’s a profile lock bypass. So what?
Hahaha! Google TV even has the gall, in the default configuration, to suggest videos to your family based on your private watch history!
I’m so mad right now. Do people seriously not share their TVs with other people? This is absolutely unacceptable, and I regret supporting Google with my purchase. I was lied to, and my privacy was violated. Do not misplace your trust in this Google TV OS like I did.
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