Brent Easley

The more I’m reading about this, the more I’m thinking about it a reverse way. Which leads me to ask:
What if those tools were leaked on purpose? What if those so called tools are being used to spy on the same people who may think they stole them?

Very interesting post Brent,

I really enjoy reading the articles posted by Krebsonsecurity. Towards the end of this one he highlighted some very important points; victims are not liable for the fraudulent charges on their debit/credit cards, however they must report this to the banks. I know some people that don’t check their credit/debit card statements regularly which can generate greater impact if their credit/debit cards were compromised. Another good thing to do is set spending thresholds that would alert you of any charges over a certain amount, or where the spending occurs. Like the article also stated; when confronted with the choice of using debit or credit, credit is the better option.

I am one of those people that do not check my statements regularly. I need to start doing that. One thing I do now since I have been in this program is check the ATM and gas station pumps for those devices that could access your account through your credit/debit card.

Companies are always able to decide if customer tracking is on or off by default. With a decision like this they probably analyzed the monetary risk of repercussions versus how valuable the information they collected. This case also only deals with one company so the settlement requirement of notifying users before tracking only applies to Vizio. Other companies may still have them turned on by default until they get taken to court.

I’m not surprised by anything in this article. I assume that any commercial network connected device is tracking my activity and finding a way to profit off of my data. Then I see some of the ad recommendations that are showing up when I browse the web and it’s obvious!

I do believe this is a privacy violation, but I think people have generally traded many of privacy rights for convenience a long time ago.

Hopefully, this is a trend and more companies are forced to deal with this privacy issue. It’s just fair for the consumer to be aware that they are being tracked, and have the option of refusing. I’m not sure how many people will agree, but obtaining this information through deception is bad business. It will be interesting to see if this mandate has any long term effects on Vizio profitability.

I red another article making similar claim, but I’m starting to wonder if this only has to do with Vizio smart TVs. I think it is matter of time before additional reports reveal the same about Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic smart TVs and so forth. It is unfortunate that certain companies will not anything to collect users’ information. This is the kind of bill I would like to see local and politicians in Washington try to push to combat those practices. This is a good opportunity for them to do something about cyber security.