Text:
I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Account Settings or using this page.
Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/ (Might have to clear cache)
Can also read about the changes here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/
Frogs do enjoy a good sauna. 😊
If that’s your line, then more power to you. I’m happy to live in a world where people make choices I don’t agree with - but I will always respect those who make an informed choice over people who let fate or advertising make their choices for them.
However, I also wouldn’t blame others for looking for an exit. Or testing other waters. Or at least thinking the grass might be greener elsewhere.
If you do continue to use Plex, consider taking a weekend for a hobbyist project such as a VPN server (OpenVPN or Wireguard are classics and broadly indistinguishable from work traffic) or a reverse proxy web server (nginx proxy manager is a good place to start). Not only are these useful and fun†‡, but they defang one of Plex’s most marketable features - the automatic NAT traversal.
†I put 3 VPNs on all my phones - a split tunnel to home; a full tunnel to home; and a commercial VPN with international egress points. The split tunnel lets my phone access my home services from any network it’s connected to (without impeding traffic destined elsewhere; the other ones are for coffee shop use). I can also give out access to the split tunnel to trusted friends to access my guest network. Also have a site-to site with a friend for off-site backup (with an encrypted tarball of my configs).
‡For the reverse proxy, I enjoy stapling it to my router’s public 80&443 and using DDNS to point vanity.example and *.vanity.example to my home public IP (I like to live dangerously; cloudflare tunnel & pangolin exist, too). Inside my home I have *.internal.vanity.example and *.home.vanity.example for the management webUIs and intranet versions of services so that they can be accessed via https with a secure lock.
Having your own tools to build your own cloud - on a raspberry pi, or an old spare laptop or retired desktop, or a second-hand mini PC is worth the hassle, particularly if you are using Plex baked into an Nvidia shield or other proprietary product, can offer options - and it never hurts to have options.
… But at this point I’m well and good into preaching to the choir.
Tl;dr: No hate to Plex users, but maybe have a plan. 😅