Facepalm: How would you feel about your Plex viewing habits being mailed to friends and family? Probably not too pleased, especially if you're a fan of certain adult films that people don't watch for the plot. But a new feature is allowing users to see what others have viewed, rated, added to their watchlist, or shared – and it's enabled by default.
Streaming media service/media server Plex rolled out a new feature this month called Discover Together. According to the company, it makes it easy to see what friends are up to. Their activity is also shared in a "week in review" email sent to friends and people who have access to their servers.
404 Media reports that, unsurprisingly, the feature has not gone down well with Plex users. "Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to store this data in Plex databases and do anything with it?. There is a reason we are selfhosting. And I get emails about what friends are watching on their servers and vice versa? Absolutely dumbfounded here. And that is toning it down," wrote one person.
The Plex forum is filled with similar angry posts about spying and privacy concerns. Another user says the fact this data is being collected and made available by Plex goes against the notion of self-hosting.
There's also the problem of people discovering exactly what content their friends are watching. "I just got an email about a friend's watching habits which he definitely didn't want to share," said one person.
"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," wrote another.
In addition to revealing people's potential porn addictions, many are worried about the feature exposing a practice employed by many Plex users: streaming illegally pirated movies and TV shows for others to watch. "It's dangerous. Certain entities would LOVE to have that data…which could mean jail time for some," one user wrote.
Plex says people can opt out of the data sharing – it's enabled by default – and that "sync events" used to track viewing history do not reveal the nature of the file played.
A forum moderator said porn viewing habits are only shared if a match can be made with content in online databases like IMDb. While a lot of porn titles aren't listed on the Amazon-owned site, it still contains plenty of filth.
A Plex spokesperson said the company did roll out a full-screen onboarding process for every user along with an email announcement and in-app announcement for the launch of Discover Together. They suggested that some people may have clicked through these settings without reading their selections. The spokesperson added that Plex does not generate community activity reports for recognized adult titles. However, some content may not be tagged as adult, resulting in its appearance in watch activity logs.
https://www.techspot.com/news/100979-plex-update-raises-concerns-over-potential-sharing-porn.html
