Social media/streaming service Plex overshares and shows your friends your porn habbits!

[thewayne]

Plex is interesting stuff. Disclaimer: I don't own it or have it running in my house, so my comments might be slightly inaccurate. It is a personal media server where you can rip your media - music and movies - and stream it to your TV and other devices across the internet. You can also share your server with friends. This assumes that you probably have A LOT of storage space on your PC in the form of a network-attached storage system (NAS or SAN).

Pretty cool, right?

Until last week.

Last week, Plex sent out an email to your friend's list showing what you've been watching! After all, your friends might have similar viewing interests. Like what kind of porn floats your boat. From the 404 Media article: “I can see that one of my friends is apparently watching a ton of cheesy, soft porn stuff (think classic ‘skinemax’ fare) from some server (it’s not mine) or Plex channel, and I am 100 percent sure they would be mortified to know that I know this,” one user wrote on the Plex Forums. “Now replace this friend, who’s just enjoying their downtime with some cheeky T&A, with a teenager who may be having difficulty figuring out feelings about their sexuality and are just trying to explore by watching LBGT dramas to see if anything there resonates or can help them figure things out. Suddenly, one of their intolerant friends or parents gets a detailed email report with a cheery title listing every little thing they’re watching…This is a dystopian nightmare of a feature and I honestly can’t believe it’s been rolled out as opt-out like this. SHAME ON YOU, PLEX!”

“I wonder how many people just had their week’s porn selections emailed to their Plex friends,” another user posted. “I just got an email about a friend’s watching habits which he definitely didn’t want to share. He insists he’s never opted into any data sharing, but…it went out anyway.”

And these emails are OPT-OUT, not OPT-IN!

This is a good example why whenever some program asks for access to my contact/address book, my reply is not just 'no, but hell no!'

Plex is taking a lot of flack over this in their forums, and probably throughout the universe of social media. I expect it will become opt-in with lots of filters on what you're willing to share.

https://www.404media.co/plex-users-fear-discover-together-week-in-review-feature-will-leak-porn-habits-to-their-friends-and-family/

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/11/27/1836216/plex-users-fear-new-feature-will-leak-porn-habits-to-their-friends-and-family

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Another example of post-privacy, post-boundaries society. I have boosted the signal.

Re: Yes ...

[thewayne]

If you don't watch out for your own privacy, it's certain that corps do little to.

[dianafortyseven]

What a nightmare! Not using Plex myself, but I'll make sure to share this with friends who do... :/

[thewayne]

Good!  I hope your friends look into the issue.

[mtbc]

My goodness, I wonder about the management of a company where this idea gets as far as reaching production.

[thewayne]

I can see the possibility that a test group might not have had any porn on their servers, or not watched any during a test period and something like this could have escaped testing.  The fact that it's opt-out instead of opt-in is quite bad, regardless.

[arlie]

Thanks for this post. While I'm not a Plex user, and don't intend to become one(!), I've subscribed to your journal as a result of ysabetwordsmith's signal boost. Those of us who aren't always impressed with the latest digital technology should stick together.

[disneydream06]

I think that's classified as a great big OOPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Just a wee bit.

[silveradept]

I'm not buying the Surprised Pikachu act here. They set it as opt-out, they introduced it using patterns that are most likely to be ignored and clicked through, and we're supposed to believe they didn't realize this is what would happen? Especially considering this is now not just "stream your own stuff," but "we have licensed content for you, too," that data is valuable to a whole bunch of people and Plex has costs to make.

What a way to inflict a self-own.

[thewayne]

It'll be interesting to see if any State AGs take 'em to court for privacy violations.