Your Roku is Spying On You

Modding hosts file occasionally in Windows is about as manic as I get. Seems to be a lot of tech calling-home and ratting us out these days.

But, then, honestly..I just have too much other stuff on my plate to let it all get to me. What they Could find out don’t worry me too much.

Having said that, I won’t get a thingie. Y’know, a Google or Amazon thingie which listens in - knows all - tells all - orders all - and is all up in yer grill ..that kinda thing.. I don’t have that stuff around. Don’t need it, don’t want it. ...But video and computer stuff? I know slightly more than the basics and have slightly more than the usual security in place.. But the usual amount of techno-tracking and research etc. doesn’t really bother me too much.

I figure if they are out to get you, as smart as some of these “theys” are, if it’s Da Man. There’s going to be no really stopping them.

Got nothing too much to worry about if they did single me out for a good snoop!

As for identity theft, All me and my family’s info is already out there in circulation courtesy the ever-entertaining Bi-monthly credit bureau, bank and IRS breaches. Bastards.

The rest of it? The small stuff? As it stands. Next to ^^..that ...I just gots Bigger fish to worry about frying is all.
 
If you are using Windows 10 your computer is spying on you already.

I’ve been running the LTSB of Win10 since I switched from Win7 over a year ago and it’s worth the extra money IMO. Drastic, drastic difference between LTSB and Win10 Pro. LTSB is so much closer to what Windows releases used to be like and if you are willing to pay for it I highly recommend using the LTSB as your OS.
 
Word on the street is, MS will start charging a subscription fee for some versions of Windows in the near future (if not for all of them). They'll probably sweeten the pot with cloud storage and the like, but switching to the subscription model seems to be the trend from them in general. Paying for Windows _and_ getting my private information harvested seems like a bad deal though, so I wonder if they'll let paying customers to completely turn off privacy-invading "features".
 
Word on the street is, MS will start charging a subscription fee for some versions of Windows in the near future (if not for all of them). They'll probably sweeten the pot with cloud storage and the like, but switching to the subscription model seems to be the trend from them in general...

Not sure how well anything like that would go down with the masses. Between work and play I have 8 confusers running Windows OS. At work, in storage, I have another five of them for backup. Paying on a monthly basis for an OS - especially on a per license basis, would result in a quick switch to another OS ..and for many I think.

As for the subscription model in general, I won’t use MS Office, instead use Apache Open Office, just for the fact that MS has gone berzerk in regards to forever widening its profit margins with those subscriptions.

For many people, a computer is an expensive luxury.. charging those people anything to essentially rent their own computers after they purchase one? ... no ..can’t see that idea going down well at all.

Well! ..Let’s just hope any broadly implemented subscription model Windows OS remains rumor. If not, I’ll switch. Because it’s not like Windows is any great prize anyway - especially from a security standpoint.
 
I spend half my time on Linux, and could switch to 100% without much drama. There are a few programs I'd have to deal with, but could probably get by with Wine for those. My laptop is what I keep hooked to the AxeIII, and even though I'm not a fan of OSX, it's working well enough, and I don't tend to upgrade it or mess with it.
 
I too could switch without drama. I have Linux for work (where it just blows any other OS out of the water completely), and macOS for creative stuff. But most people can't. Apple, for instance, doesn't have "cheap" hardware that most people buy. Google Chromebook, while cheap and secure, doesn't run any "real" software, and will data mine all of your personal data. Linux is too "foreign" in today's IT environments at most companies. If this came to pass, this is what MS would be betting on. I too think this would be an extremely harebrained move on their part, but then again, they've done many such moves over the past two decades, and they do spend billions of dollars a year on Windows R&D. Eventually they'll want to see some ROI.
 
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....but then again, they've done many such moves over the past two decades, and they do spend billions of dollars a year on Windows R&D. Eventually they'll want to see some ROI.

Microsoft is one of the biggest and most profitable corporations in the world – how much more of an ROI do you think they should be angling for? :D

Offering an OS on a subscription basis - a lot of it would come down to cost of ownership of a the overall system over time, since a computer’s hardware needs updating to keep up with software demands..

...Just quickly grabbed some numbers off the interwebs to make a point. Honestly not sure exactly how accurate they are..

“Apparently” ..People need to upgrade computers on average 5-10 years (average 7.5), to stream video and browse the internet.

So cost to cover a $200.00 OS would be equal to about $2.22 a month

People need to upgrade computers on average 3-4 years (average 3.5 years) for handling the latest computer games.

So cost to cover a $200.00 OS would be equal to about $4.76 a month

People need to upgrade computers for office use etc. about every 5 years.

So cost to cover a $200.00 OS would be equal to about $3.34 a month

So, I could imagine there would be real outcry for charging people any-more than $5.00 a month for a subscription, top of the line OS.

Would it really be more profitable then to put up with more tech calls, more people losing their marbles over billing issues, more security issues due to loss of data when not paying their subscription bills, more lawsuits, less overall sales etc.. by selling subscriptions for $5.00 per month ...over the current model?

Probably not – all numbers crunched.
 
I'm a little over a week into this now. Here's some updates, in picture format. For the past 24 hours:

View attachment 49538

View attachment 49539

That TCL Roku TV is largely responsible for all the Roku traffic. The waston.telemetry.microsoft.com endpoint is the two Xboxes in the house -- until this weekend that wasn't in my top list, but after a few hours of playing Destiny 2 with the kids on Sunday it was way up there. They love to send data home. Amazon is the Echo and the Echo Tap I suspect -- both of those are heading out. We don't use them enough for me to care to keep them on our network.
Ian,
what are you using to trap/collect/block all this ???
 
Try Untangle Home Pro.

I've been wandering in the home firewall hell for 3 years!

I've tried all the open source firewalls and they're either...
• abandoned sourceforge projects
• a mashup of great features and half-baked, half-working features
• business products wth a severely feature limited free home version
• business products with a completely unrealistic feature set for home use (e.g. no uPnP)
• non-existent, or terrible, reporting features
• zero on the WAF scale
• expect you drop to the CLI to do pretty much anything beyond plain vanilla

The commercial products either...
• too expensive
• completely business-centric feature set (i.e. overkill)
• assume you're an idiot and are so dumbed down they're useless
• lock you into buying their hardware
• lock you into their service plans
• store your data and log your information to THEIR servers

I finally broke down and "bought" Untangle for $50/yr after demo'ing it. I have to say, it's completely awesome. I run it on a old Dell box with 2 NICs and it sits between my home network and the cable modem. When it renews I'm seriously considering a 5 year renewal, which puts it at $3.33/mo.

The best part is the extensive application support, so blocking or allowing Netflix/Youtube/anything is a checkbox away. The very distant runner up would be Sophos UTM Home Edition, but getting it up and running for home use was a nightmare -- IOW it worked great for blocking everything.

Super impressed with Untangle.
 
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The best part is the extensive application support, so blocking or allowing Netflix/Youtube/anything is a checkbox away.

Modern firewalls/NGFW (Next Generation Firewall) are indeed amazing devices; after wrestling with Cisco ASA's, Ironport proxy/webfilters, etc. for years I've recently deployed a modern Fortigate NGFW at work and have been 'getting deep' with it over the last few months. My life as a network admin is so much better and easier, no doubt, with modern firewall tech.

Like you say, granular application control, intrusion protection/scanning, DDos mitigation, virus scanning, botnet blocking, etc. are all configured fairly easily and quickly. They really do simplify a great many things.

Deep network forensics/analytics are made easy via a click of a button, and network/user based firewall, QoS, application, VPN, and webfiltering policies all come together in an intuitive way and fairly easy to configure...indeed the way to go.

I have a smaller Fortigate at home that I'm currently testing/using and it has all of the functionality of the 'big beast' as work...NGFW's are indeed awesome.

Super impressed with Untangle.

That looks like an interesting service; to get the most out of a NGFW you need subscriptions/updates to the various app signatures, virus updates, botnet blocking, etc. and subscriptions could arguably be worth it to run NGFW tech at home.
 
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Which Fortigate? The cheapest baseline Fortigate 30E with the Enterprise Bundle (seems pretty comparable to the Untangle feature set) starts in the $600-$800 range for the first year. But I'll admit I'm not familiar with the Fortinet NGFW offerings.

Obviously, it's tough to compare performance because Untangle sits on whatever hardware you give it.
 
Which Fortigate? The cheapest baseline Fortigate 30E with the Enterprise Bundle (seems pretty comparable to the Untangle feature set) starts in the $600-$800 range for the first year. But I'll admit I'm not familiar with the Fortinet NGFW offerings.

Obviously, it's tough to compare performance because Untangle sits on whatever hardware you give it.

I have a Fortigate 60D at home and run a 3000D at work, both with the full feature set. That price for the 30E/bundle is definitely prohibitive for home use....

I had a cursory glance at the Untangle offering and it's interesting and worth exploring more; the subscription rate is very reasonable and since it runs well on older hardware that you can find for next to nothing you can be in business for cheap. If Untangle is as good as it seems it would be a fantastic, and cheap, way to get into NGFW tech at home....cool stuff.
 
Finally got my Rasperry Pi and Pi-Hole set up at home.

Before that, I did some research on it, and I have installed several Debian 9.x Linux servers running under VMWare for 4 of my clients, upon which Pi-Hole also runs - they love it! Piece of cake to set up, really, and it works so well - one of my clients has over 400 PCs, let alone how many wireless devices they have connected. I just point their main DNS servers in Windows Server to the Pi-Hole server as the DNS forwarder, and viola - whole network protected!

Thanks for starting this thread!
 
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