I was going to start a new thread in Purchasing Advice, but this is broadly privacy-related.
Our Toronto cable provider (Rogers) has a new system based on Comcast X1, and their legacy system has suddenly become unwatchable most of the week. I think they are clearly trying to move customers over to the new platform so they can cancel the old one and save on costs. It's somewhat annoying, but that's not my biggest problem with this.
This new platform comes with voice remotes, with no other alternatives I can see. That means that if we should move over, we will now have six remotes scattered across the house with microphones embedded in them. They say the mics only activate with a button press, but that would seem to be easily hackable. I might (mostly) trust Apple to lock down the mics on my phone and keep the software updated, but the cable company? Um, no.
Everything seems to have a microphone embedded in them nowadays. Whether it's cable remotes (or streaming Rokus and AppleTVs), Watches (which seem to be easily breached by the Saudi Embassy incident), game consoles, smart speakers, tvs, even smart thermostats, for some strange reason.
I might be paranoid, but this is going to come back to haunt us one day when we discover that corporate interests are listening to exactly what we say, and devious political interests are quietly piggybacking on them.
It was great to find out the other day that there's a
non-voice remote available for the Apple TV, but that doesn't help with my Rogers/Comcast problem.
I think, at minimum, we need to pass a law that anything with a mic or camera embedded inside (active or not) needs to be identified clearly with a logo on the front of the box. And hopefully the tech teardowns we get in the future will start to encompass tips on how to deactivate a microphone if you wish.
Anyone have Rogers/Comcast X1 here? Can I just
Zuckerberg the microphones with tape?