I bet this is much broader than we all realized because just earlier today I was reading on https://gist.github.com/probonopd/3ad6b7777caea1503f00d5fe77... in order to tinker with a cheap (like really cheap) Android video projector : "Device: Magcubic HY300 Pro Android Projector (ui_Veng.projector) Issue: Device was being used as a residential proxy node without consent, causing thousands of suspicious DNS requests and bandwidth usage." linked in there just few months ago.
It's not present on mine (AFAICT) which lead me to think either it was a genuine mistake or their bailed on that benefit or they upgraded to a harder to detect technique.
An acquaintance mentioned they also bought a similar device few months ago. I believe there will be a lot MORE of these so we should soon be able to witness if it's an innocent mistake or the new normal.
I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies.
Also pre-installed adware is not a surprise, I found adware in the official firmware image of a certain Chinese tablet.
What worries me much more is backdoors from the foreign companies and governments that can be pre-installed at the factory to collect intelligence information. For example, I became aware that a certain maker of a popular mobile OS was collecting the cell tower IDs and WiFi access point identifiers along with GPS coordinates of a device. Obviously they collect this information to be able to guide missiles and drones when GPS signal is jammed (GPS is very low power and easy to jam). This is not acceptable.
How can we prevent this? I think, for every imported device having a CPU and Internet connectivity:
- the user must be able to re-flash firmware with their own code.
- the local government must have access to the full source code and be able to search for vulnerabilities or backdoors, including using AI tools. Found vulnerabilities are considered a reward and may be used against countries not doing inspections. No access - no import permission.
- any telemetry or data collection, or updates must be opt-in only and disabled by default.
- any telemetry or updates must go through a server controlled by the local government, in unencrypted form, to detect attempts to collect intelligence information or install malicious update.
Sadly our government instead only demands that manufacturers pre-install their closed-source software on all imported devices and that's all.
>What worries me much more is backdoors from the foreign companies and governments that can be pre-installed at the factory to collect intelligence information.
Most Americans are at a greater threat of harm from their own government that a foreign one. What worries me is all the mass surveillance done by big tech which bypasses the 4th Amendment and gives the government Americans data without a warrant.
There's already a front door with the adtech for US alphabet boys. This could likely be collected by others as well. We saw this happened where foreign hackers exploited a backdoor designed for American authorities[1]. This is what experts are referring to when they say there's no backdoor only for me.
This could be compelling to politicians, though, and would certainly be a step in the right direction.
>- any telemetry or data collection, or updates must be opt-in only and disabled by default
This should be how it is for everything foreign made software or not. Would be very hard to get done with the big tech lobby in the US.
> I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies.
I am not shedding any tears for the ad companies, but I don't exactly expect or want a consumer device to be doing this in the background without the owner's knowledge.
In some parts of Moscow GPS is spoofed and the displayed location is wrong. If, for example, a "smart" car gets a task from its manufacturer to film some secret object, it would fail if it relied only on GPS and did not use cell towers and WiFi points for determining its location. So knowing their location determines whether the mission would fail or succeed. So foreign devices should not be allowed to collect such information.
I think that might have been semi-sarcastic. I mean, there are lots of reasons to do this sort of thing, some are bad, some are not so bad, most are not war.
Oh this was a failed device that Mozilla offered. I had a couple back in the day. It was called Matchstick. Sick t shirts. Basically an OSS chromecast.
> I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies.
Yeah, it's like—a cheap streaming stick AND it poisons the advertising well? I'm pretty happy with my Fire TV Stick, but they're really tempting me here.
> a certain maker of a popular mobile OS was collecting the cell tower IDs and WiFi access point identifiers along with GPS coordinates of a device. Obviously they collect this information to be able to guide missiles and drones when GPS signal is jammed
Is this sarcasm? GPS can take several minutes to get a location, and works poorly indoors. One of the reasons why Google Maps is so quick and precise is because Google has gathered exactly this data through users and Street View drive-bys.
Could it be used for missiles? Sure. Is it obviously the intention? No.
> If Location Services is on, your device will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to Apple to augment Apple's crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations.
> When Location Accuracy is on, Google periodically collects information about the locations of wireless signals and sensors observed by your device to crowdsource location estimates. This helps everyone find locations better.
They do ask the device owner - if you review the location services description on android[1] you will see they explicitly say they collect this information from your device. I strongly disagree that they need to get government permission for this - they are simply recording signals that reach the device, akin to making notes about what kinds of cars you see. This is not a thing a government should have control over people doing and not a thing that should be registered with the governement.
Should Google ask permission from the device owner, and from the local government before collecting the data? I heard a certain foreign mobile app was banned in US for doing less than that.
Fake ad clicks cost the advertiser money, not the ad company.
Ad companies generally try to detect fake clicks, but any fake clicks that get through just earn money for the ad company (at the cost of making the advertisers campaign have a lower ROI)
> Fake ad clicks cost the advertiser money, not the ad company.
It also diminishes the value of the clicks provided by the ad company. It doesn't cost them dollars directly, but makes all their advertising worth less.
Good products do not need much advertising. For example, when buying DRAM, I compare the specification and prices and do not look at the advertisement.
In this case it’s actual malice, that the streaming stick is set up for residential proxy and ad fraud straight from the factory. But incompetence can lead to the same place if it’s a poorly engineered, un-maintained device with an old version of Android that will never be patched and is always one no-click exploit away from being commandeered into residential proxy and ad fraud.
Those TV streaming boxes really are (from a cybersecurity perspective) probably one of the worst things you can buy. Here is the "Darknet Diaries" Episode on them: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/172/
Any way to identify or block these proxy and ad click services in the router? Say a Ubiquiti or even pfsense?
I’m not using any of these boxes for especially this reason, but about 10-15 years ago had noticed my treadmill pinging a Chinese portal. I removed the WiFi access from the treadmill but am curious if there might be other devices.
Any specific ports, etc these guys use or are they mostly impossible to distinguish from regular internet traffic?
My another worry has been if these can monitor other Internet traffic, though I think HTTPS should mostly prevent that.
And which part of "ad fraud" is the fraud? As far as I can tell, ad networks and advertisers are the fraud and they are also part of the increasing surveillance state.
> generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee
I don't want to blame the purchasers of these things - who are some of the victims - but at the same time, it does seem like a Too Good To Be True situation.
I have an elderly client who sends me links of stuff to buy all the time. One day it's one of these streaming sticks, the next day it's half-price stamps, and I tell her every time, please don't buy this stuff. And yet she does anyway, as if I was almost being mean and saying no just to say no.
So yes, I do want to blame the purchasers of these things, sometimes. To prove her point that her stamps were legitimate, she mailed me a card using one of her half priced (but likely fake) stamps and it made it through!
Perhaps they grew up in a time/environment where "if it was that bad they wouldn't be allowed to advertise it", and they're still using that old calibration?
It could be possible, I haven't done the math though.
Stremio +Torbox is $3/month and they can probably share 10+ households on one TorBox account so it could work out. The seller could just stop paying the TorBox subscription at whatever point and they have an incentive to do so.
Uhh, I have an extended family member, who not only uses it, but now also tries to get other people to get into it. Since I was familiar with this practice ( and the issues it makes worse ), I noted those to him in an attempt to both politely decline and, hopefully, spare him, and society, some future problems. Without going into any identifying details, he didn't take it well ( and I don't think I got on my high horse ).
Maybe, but if they're a not-very-tech savvy older person buying this, they probably remember shows being free from over the air antennas and may think it is something like that.
Yes, in fact I have an antenna and a HDHomeRun nestled in my attic to record over the air shows that I occasionally consume.
But, I think it's far more common for people to have a TV service today, perhaps since comcast and their ilk push hard the TV/phone/internet bundle, and gone are the years when everyone would fiddle with the antennas on the back of their TV to get the right reception.
If you offered most people free streaming for a $37 USB stick but directly told them it would be faking ad clicks when the TV is off, would any of them really care?
No, and that's is the root of the problem. The buyer is happy and so is the seller. They don't care to understand what they're allowing and everyone is allowing it to happen.
It's not just one device line; Have a look at the list maintained by the proxy tracking service Synthient, which tracks streaming boxes, digital picture frames and other IoT devices that have been known to bundle residential proxy software, among other malicious apps. They currently track almost 1,000 different makes and model numbers.
Defrauding ad networks doesn't seem like a bad thing, although using my internet connection as a proxy is obviously terrible. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that my connection is being sold as a VPN service by the vendor.
It'll be a marginal effect, but fake clicks impacts the ad buyer, which then impacts their financials and pricing.
The only winner here is the scammers running the fake affiliate sites on which these sticks are "clicking". Or, am I missing some facet of this enterprise?
Another winner is the person who gets to watch cheap digital TV, without putting together a usable antenna and limiting their reception to the broadcast channels that are nearby.
I mean: They just pay the money, plug the thing in, push some buttons, and: TV happens. Right?
why is running a proxy a bad thing? someone profiting off it could be bad maybe, but even that is good if it pays for my subscription.
but compare running tor nodes, and especially exit nodes. that surely would be a good thing, so at least if you think tor is good then running a proxy should be the same and it should be normalized.
doing it in secret without the user knowing is what's bad
I can’t prove it, but I live in Brazil and after getting a smart TV from LG, I started receiving challenges across all Google services, indicating they received bot traffic from my network. I only used apps from streaming services I actually paid for.
I suspect these TVs either come with residential proxies set up from the factory, or they have such poor security that they’re instantly hacked. Either way, TV manufacturers (including reputable ones like LG) are to blame.
These are not "streaming boxes" in the sense you are talking about. Their appeal is that they come preloaded with chinese pirate streaming apps. Traditional streaming boxes - Apple TV, Fire stick, Roku - are not affected by this, though if you want privacy-focused Apple TV is the only remaining contender, and with Apple's continued descent into advertising vendor I'd guess that one is not long for this world, either.
Apple TV is currently the best balance of privacy and convenience. The only way to get more private is using a PC, but that limits the resolution for most streaming services to 720p or 1080p.
I'm increasingly being convinced the only way to do that is you do a media pc nuc. The problem, of course, is you probably won't have the netflix app. It's painful to setup such a box to stream from various services.
Of all the evils normally associated with visual programming languages, enabling cybercrime isn't one I've previously considered. Now that I've seen it, I'm surprised it wasn't more common before LLMs appeared.
I recently got an Apple TV 4K and have been really enjoying the ad free experience. Worth every penny. Our smart tv had turned into a Christmas tree of ads.
As much as I hate Apple for what they've done to the average consumer in regards to computing, it would be just impossible and dishonest to say anything other than Apple is the outright winner in streaming devices. The experience is so smooth.
Considering their recent decision to give up on building Apple Maps into a serious contender and instead enshittify it with ads, I don't have much faith Apple TV will be far behind.
> allowing low-skilled operators to drag blocks of code together in their editor — without any need to understand what the underlying code blocks do or how they work.
Generally, it's advisable to create a dedicated wifi network for all potentially hostile devices.
This dedicated wifi network can just be connecting your devices to your guest wifi while you figure it out, and limiting the rate of speed as needed.
That can be cameras, tv's, thermostats, tv sticks and anything else that might not only call home, but actively scope what you have in your home network when it's none of it's business.
I bet this is much broader than we all realized because just earlier today I was reading on https://gist.github.com/probonopd/3ad6b7777caea1503f00d5fe77... in order to tinker with a cheap (like really cheap) Android video projector : "Device: Magcubic HY300 Pro Android Projector (ui_Veng.projector) Issue: Device was being used as a residential proxy node without consent, causing thousands of suspicious DNS requests and bandwidth usage." linked in there just few months ago.
It's not present on mine (AFAICT) which lead me to think either it was a genuine mistake or their bailed on that benefit or they upgraded to a harder to detect technique.
An acquaintance mentioned they also bought a similar device few months ago. I believe there will be a lot MORE of these so we should soon be able to witness if it's an innocent mistake or the new normal.
[delayed]
I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies.
Also pre-installed adware is not a surprise, I found adware in the official firmware image of a certain Chinese tablet.
What worries me much more is backdoors from the foreign companies and governments that can be pre-installed at the factory to collect intelligence information. For example, I became aware that a certain maker of a popular mobile OS was collecting the cell tower IDs and WiFi access point identifiers along with GPS coordinates of a device. Obviously they collect this information to be able to guide missiles and drones when GPS signal is jammed (GPS is very low power and easy to jam). This is not acceptable.
How can we prevent this? I think, for every imported device having a CPU and Internet connectivity:
- the user must be able to re-flash firmware with their own code.
- the local government must have access to the full source code and be able to search for vulnerabilities or backdoors, including using AI tools. Found vulnerabilities are considered a reward and may be used against countries not doing inspections. No access - no import permission.
- any telemetry or data collection, or updates must be opt-in only and disabled by default.
- any telemetry or updates must go through a server controlled by the local government, in unencrypted form, to detect attempts to collect intelligence information or install malicious update.
Sadly our government instead only demands that manufacturers pre-install their closed-source software on all imported devices and that's all.
>What worries me much more is backdoors from the foreign companies and governments that can be pre-installed at the factory to collect intelligence information.
Most Americans are at a greater threat of harm from their own government that a foreign one. What worries me is all the mass surveillance done by big tech which bypasses the 4th Amendment and gives the government Americans data without a warrant.
There's already a front door with the adtech for US alphabet boys. This could likely be collected by others as well. We saw this happened where foreign hackers exploited a backdoor designed for American authorities[1]. This is what experts are referring to when they say there's no backdoor only for me.
This could be compelling to politicians, though, and would certainly be a step in the right direction.
>- any telemetry or data collection, or updates must be opt-in only and disabled by default
This should be how it is for everything foreign made software or not. Would be very hard to get done with the big tech lobby in the US.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/07/the-30-year-old-internet-b...
> I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies.
I am not shedding any tears for the ad companies, but I don't exactly expect or want a consumer device to be doing this in the background without the owner's knowledge.
> Obviously they collect this information to be able to guide missiles and drones when GPS signal is jammed
Are there a lot of missiles that travel slowly enough to be able to guide themselves via watching for nearby wifi signals?
> for every imported device having a CPU and Internet connectivity
Why limit this to imported devices?
In some parts of Moscow GPS is spoofed and the displayed location is wrong. If, for example, a "smart" car gets a task from its manufacturer to film some secret object, it would fail if it relied only on GPS and did not use cell towers and WiFi points for determining its location. So knowing their location determines whether the mission would fail or succeed. So foreign devices should not be allowed to collect such information.
>> Obviously they collect this information to be able to guide missiles and drones when GPS signal is jammed
> Are there a lot of missiles that travel slowly enough to be able to guide themselves via watching for nearby wifi signals?
Cheap, slow-moving drones are the hot new missiles on the battlefield of today. This often talked-about model files at 115 mph (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136).
I think that might have been semi-sarcastic. I mean, there are lots of reasons to do this sort of thing, some are bad, some are not so bad, most are not war.
Oh this was a failed device that Mozilla offered. I had a couple back in the day. It was called Matchstick. Sick t shirts. Basically an OSS chromecast.
> I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies.
Yeah, it's like—a cheap streaming stick AND it poisons the advertising well? I'm pretty happy with my Fire TV Stick, but they're really tempting me here.
My pinenote runs the original spyware image - I don't have a problem with Winnie the Pooh reading along with me.
> a certain maker of a popular mobile OS was collecting the cell tower IDs and WiFi access point identifiers along with GPS coordinates of a device. Obviously they collect this information to be able to guide missiles and drones when GPS signal is jammed
Is this sarcasm? GPS can take several minutes to get a location, and works poorly indoors. One of the reasons why Google Maps is so quick and precise is because Google has gathered exactly this data through users and Street View drive-bys.
Could it be used for missiles? Sure. Is it obviously the intention? No.
Yeah this is extremely standard:
Apple: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102515
> If Location Services is on, your device will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to Apple to augment Apple's crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations.
Google: https://support.google.com/android/answer/15157297?sjid=1648...
> When Location Accuracy is on, Google periodically collects information about the locations of wireless signals and sensors observed by your device to crowdsource location estimates. This helps everyone find locations better.
Mozilla used to run a very similar service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Location_Service
Not to mention truly crowd-sourced databases like wigle.net.
They should ask the permission from device owner and local government before collecting the data.
They do ask the device owner - if you review the location services description on android[1] you will see they explicitly say they collect this information from your device. I strongly disagree that they need to get government permission for this - they are simply recording signals that reach the device, akin to making notes about what kinds of cars you see. This is not a thing a government should have control over people doing and not a thing that should be registered with the governement.
[1] https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281?sjid=66634...
Should Google ask permission from the device owner, and from the local government before collecting the data? I heard a certain foreign mobile app was banned in US for doing less than that.
Fake ad clicks cost the advertiser money, not the ad company.
Ad companies generally try to detect fake clicks, but any fake clicks that get through just earn money for the ad company (at the cost of making the advertisers campaign have a lower ROI)
> Fake ad clicks cost the advertiser money, not the ad company.
It also diminishes the value of the clicks provided by the ad company. It doesn't cost them dollars directly, but makes all their advertising worth less.
Good products do not need much advertising. For example, when buying DRAM, I compare the specification and prices and do not look at the advertisement.
In this case it’s actual malice, that the streaming stick is set up for residential proxy and ad fraud straight from the factory. But incompetence can lead to the same place if it’s a poorly engineered, un-maintained device with an old version of Android that will never be patched and is always one no-click exploit away from being commandeered into residential proxy and ad fraud.
Those TV streaming boxes really are (from a cybersecurity perspective) probably one of the worst things you can buy. Here is the "Darknet Diaries" Episode on them: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/172/
I wonder to what degree malice can be engineered to look like incompetence?
Try examining the old entries from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underhanded_C_Contest.
Any way to identify or block these proxy and ad click services in the router? Say a Ubiquiti or even pfsense?
I’m not using any of these boxes for especially this reason, but about 10-15 years ago had noticed my treadmill pinging a Chinese portal. I removed the WiFi access from the treadmill but am curious if there might be other devices.
Any specific ports, etc these guys use or are they mostly impossible to distinguish from regular internet traffic?
My another worry has been if these can monitor other Internet traffic, though I think HTTPS should mostly prevent that.
And which part of "ad fraud" is the fraud? As far as I can tell, ad networks and advertisers are the fraud and they are also part of the increasing surveillance state.
Didn't know Krebs was a mainstream news puppet.
> generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee
I don't want to blame the purchasers of these things - who are some of the victims - but at the same time, it does seem like a Too Good To Be True situation.
I have an elderly client who sends me links of stuff to buy all the time. One day it's one of these streaming sticks, the next day it's half-price stamps, and I tell her every time, please don't buy this stuff. And yet she does anyway, as if I was almost being mean and saying no just to say no.
So yes, I do want to blame the purchasers of these things, sometimes. To prove her point that her stamps were legitimate, she mailed me a card using one of her half priced (but likely fake) stamps and it made it through!
Perhaps they grew up in a time/environment where "if it was that bad they wouldn't be allowed to advertise it", and they're still using that old calibration?
OTOH - TV, radio, and YouTube are all unlimited and free. Why not streaming?
There are lots of people alive who grew up during the days of broadcast TV and radio. I get why they might not understand the difference.
It could be possible, I haven't done the math though.
Stremio +Torbox is $3/month and they can probably share 10+ households on one TorBox account so it could work out. The seller could just stop paying the TorBox subscription at whatever point and they have an incentive to do so.
Uhh, I have an extended family member, who not only uses it, but now also tries to get other people to get into it. Since I was familiar with this practice ( and the issues it makes worse ), I noted those to him in an attempt to both politely decline and, hopefully, spare him, and society, some future problems. Without going into any identifying details, he didn't take it well ( and I don't think I got on my high horse ).
Anyway, I think some level of blame is warranted.
Maybe, but if they're a not-very-tech savvy older person buying this, they probably remember shows being free from over the air antennas and may think it is something like that.
> they probably remember shows being free from over the air antennas
you are aware broadcast TV never ended?
Yes, in fact I have an antenna and a HDHomeRun nestled in my attic to record over the air shows that I occasionally consume.
But, I think it's far more common for people to have a TV service today, perhaps since comcast and their ilk push hard the TV/phone/internet bundle, and gone are the years when everyone would fiddle with the antennas on the back of their TV to get the right reception.
I watch TV over an antenna, shows are free still
It sounds like scam
Well now I want one
Stremio+TorBox are the two words. ($3/month)
That's not what these things are. They come preloaded with apps that stream pirate broadcast streams and on-demand servers operated out of China.
If you offered most people free streaming for a $37 USB stick but directly told them it would be faking ad clicks when the TV is off, would any of them really care?
No, and that's is the root of the problem. The buyer is happy and so is the seller. They don't care to understand what they're allowing and everyone is allowing it to happen.
They're just meeting the standards American society has set.
Thankfully this seems limited to a specific device (H96). Darknet diaries has a good story about streaming devices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS6PkuZuxJ4
It's not just one device line; Have a look at the list maintained by the proxy tracking service Synthient, which tracks streaming boxes, digital picture frames and other IoT devices that have been known to bundle residential proxy software, among other malicious apps. They currently track almost 1,000 different makes and model numbers.
https://github.com/synthient/public-research/blob/main/2026/...
Defrauding ad networks doesn't seem like a bad thing, although using my internet connection as a proxy is obviously terrible. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that my connection is being sold as a VPN service by the vendor.
It'll be a marginal effect, but fake clicks impacts the ad buyer, which then impacts their financials and pricing.
The only winner here is the scammers running the fake affiliate sites on which these sticks are "clicking". Or, am I missing some facet of this enterprise?
Another winner is the person who gets to watch cheap digital TV, without putting together a usable antenna and limiting their reception to the broadcast channels that are nearby.
I mean: They just pay the money, plug the thing in, push some buttons, and: TV happens. Right?
why is running a proxy a bad thing? someone profiting off it could be bad maybe, but even that is good if it pays for my subscription.
but compare running tor nodes, and especially exit nodes. that surely would be a good thing, so at least if you think tor is good then running a proxy should be the same and it should be normalized.
doing it in secret without the user knowing is what's bad
Brazil. Last year I effectively blocked Brazil for a while. Ultimately I settled on three possibilities for the traffic I was seeing:
01: DDOS
10: Residential proxies
11: Somebody DDOSing residential proxies
I can’t prove it, but I live in Brazil and after getting a smart TV from LG, I started receiving challenges across all Google services, indicating they received bot traffic from my network. I only used apps from streaming services I actually paid for.
I suspect these TVs either come with residential proxies set up from the factory, or they have such poor security that they’re instantly hacked. Either way, TV manufacturers (including reputable ones like LG) are to blame.
So where can I get an actual privacy focused streaming box, even if the apps (Neflix etc) running on it are not?
These are not "streaming boxes" in the sense you are talking about. Their appeal is that they come preloaded with chinese pirate streaming apps. Traditional streaming boxes - Apple TV, Fire stick, Roku - are not affected by this, though if you want privacy-focused Apple TV is the only remaining contender, and with Apple's continued descent into advertising vendor I'd guess that one is not long for this world, either.
Apple TV is currently the best balance of privacy and convenience. The only way to get more private is using a PC, but that limits the resolution for most streaming services to 720p or 1080p.
I'm increasingly being convinced the only way to do that is you do a media pc nuc. The problem, of course, is you probably won't have the netflix app. It's painful to setup such a box to stream from various services.
I tried going that route, but most apps for streaming are Android. And that was only one of the issues.
It was a rabbit hole and in the end I got back using my NVIDIA Shield. This is about 10 years now, but it’s actually still the best option.
I assume apple TV doesn’t do malicious things like this, and we love the interface and it “just works” with HDR
Of all the evils normally associated with visual programming languages, enabling cybercrime isn't one I've previously considered. Now that I've seen it, I'm surprised it wasn't more common before LLMs appeared.
I didnt know anybody bought a streaming stick anymore
A better solution is just leech the content and stick it on a generic USB flash stick.
I recently got an Apple TV 4K and have been really enjoying the ad free experience. Worth every penny. Our smart tv had turned into a Christmas tree of ads.
As much as I hate Apple for what they've done to the average consumer in regards to computing, it would be just impossible and dishonest to say anything other than Apple is the outright winner in streaming devices. The experience is so smooth.
Considering their recent decision to give up on building Apple Maps into a serious contender and instead enshittify it with ads, I don't have much faith Apple TV will be far behind.
> allowing low-skilled operators to drag blocks of code together in their editor — without any need to understand what the underlying code blocks do or how they work.
We're called engineers brian.
Generally, it's advisable to create a dedicated wifi network for all potentially hostile devices.
This dedicated wifi network can just be connecting your devices to your guest wifi while you figure it out, and limiting the rate of speed as needed.
That can be cameras, tv's, thermostats, tv sticks and anything else that might not only call home, but actively scope what you have in your home network when it's none of it's business.