Is my Western Digital Media Player … A SPY???

A couple of months ago I decided to ditch my Tivo units which I had been using to play movies from my media server and opt for a new (non-subscription based) device from Western Digital, the WD TV Live Media Player (WDTV Live Plus). This saves me money since I don’t have the $ 25 dollar a month recurring billing that I had with the Tivo, it plays back almost any format including .ISO that I toss at it and gave me the opportunity to re-purpose an old PC into a media server.

All seemed well until this past weekend when I checked out my firewall and found that this nifty little box was sending out packets and slamming my firewall every 3 seconds trying to find a way out of my private network and on to the WWW to send whatever information it’s been programmed to send to a site named GeoBytes which is a data collection warehouse that does IP targeted advertising.

The concern that I have with this is that this is obviously privacy, I wasn’t aware that my WD Live was talking out to a site, I don’t know what information that site is collecting about me and had it not been for my firewall showing the persistent (every 3 seconds) attempts, port by port, trying to find a way out, I would have never known it.

GeoBytes is a marketing firm, but to market you need to know what I’m interested in, so this box on my network could in theory be sending out a message that I’m in Phoenix and I’m watching a copy of Little Mermaid and selling this information to another site and the next time that I log on to say Facebook (another privacy issue laden site) I may see a banner ad that says “Disney Movies on Sale for $ 5 dollars at the WalMart 2 miles from your home”. I can almost deal with that but what I can’t deal with is what other information the box may be sending out and to who!

The box could very easily be sending out information that I have 100 movie titles on my media center and sell that list to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) or that I have 500 MP3′s and sell that list to the RIAA who then want to see if all my movies and songs are legal.

This is a privacy issue and until I get a really good answer from Western Digital as to why their box is doing this, my firewall will remain blocked and I am now seriously considering taking these units back to Best Buy for a full refund!