I wish there was some regulation that would force TVs to have a "dumb" mode. When the colors on our previous living room TV started to go out my dad ended up buying a new huge Vizio during black friday for really cheap. He left it to me to set up, since I'm the tech guy of the family, as you all probably understand.
I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in (or at the very least the option was so well hidden I didn't see one). Of course the sign up asks for PII like my name and phone number.
Vizio was bought out by Walmart a while back, with the intent of expanding Walmart's advertising empire.
It's really unfortunate that the TV market has ended up the way it has. My family still has a few CRTs going that have been working every day for decades, just turn it on and TV immediately starts playing. I miss that level of simplicity.
> I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in (or at the very least the option was so well hidden I didn't see one). Of course the sign up asks for PII like my name and phone number.
The only solution we have to this is to return the TV as defective and buy something else until you find something that works without an account or an app. A sane country would have regulations that make spying on you illegal but our government works for corporations instead of the public so they'll never protect us when there's money to be made off of us.
I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in
I missed the part of your comment where you put it back in the box and returned it.
(Yeah, I know, understandable reasons. But that's exactly what I would do if it were going in my house.)
This is one of the many reasons I haven't owned a TV for the last 5 years. I just watch stuff on the computer, or not at all. It's actually nice not having it looming over me.
My research is a few months old, but at the time Vizio looked like the least bad option, largely because a lawsuit had pushed them to narrow what they collect.
The Koreans are taking a huge risk destroying the trust they've built over the last 30 years with this incessant spying and adware. Both LG and Samsung are engaged in this and it could open the door to Chinese rivals like TCL and HiVision. Not because they're much better but because discoveries like these will leave a bad taste in people's mouth whenever they want to buy a new TV.
They need to put a stop to this or they'll start losing market share fast.
Can this spying and tracking be so lucrative that they'll risk alienating their customers over it?
They all use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) and collect profiling data to feed into an Ad service offering.
Samsung started this and is now a leading supplier for targeted advertising on TVs (because old serialized TV doesn't have such an option), this is forcing all the brands to follow and do the same, because:
#A: it creates a revenue stream based on active devices (like Apple/Google has), not just at the time of sales, and
#B: their business partners now demand it (big electronics chains won't sell a TV which will affect their targeted ad promotions)
It would be much more valuable to have proper journalists (sorry) to write an investigative report on this whole Ad-targeting industry, to create pressure not just on some TV-vendors but on all home appliances (including cable-company set-top-boxes, which do exactly the same btw).
The only way out of this is to increase public pressure to the point that a regulation (a LAW!) is drafted and enforced.
This spying is even more prevelant in Korean cars, too. Really sad, because they can be a decent enough product (no worse than any other cheap car) but they are very anti consumer and burning their reputation.
Not because they're much better but because discoveries like these will leave a bad taste in people's mouth whenever they want to buy a new TV.
It ain't just TVs. Now that I've found out that my Hyundai is not only spying on me, but snitching to the insurance company, I might just take South Korea companies off my list for anything.
Taken literally, you’re claiming that only 80 people on Earth would notice. Maybe a tenth of that if we narrow down what is meant by «consumer». I assume you don’t really believe that?
> How is this not a gigantic fine from the EU for some kind of GDPR reason
The underlying "research" is unfortunately not that clean, but I'd say for two reasons:
1. Because looking at the LG ToS alone, it seems that the devices do MUCH more data-collecting outside Europe
2. GDPR is covering your personal information (WHO you are) and personal identifiable information (data that can be used to infer WHO you are). In a nutshell: If a device (a TV, a phone, a car, a Smart Home device, whatever) collects information to PROFILE you, without collecting data about WHO you are, they are not violating your privacy. The company needs to be VERY careful about not accidentally collecting identifiable information, but as long as this doesn't happen, it's within GDPR.
That said, a proper technical write-up of the issues found, with an investigation by a professional journalist would be very helpful to get things going, put proper pressure where it needs to be and dismantle this Ad network business-model of all those TV-manufacturers (Samsung Ads, LG Ads, TCL Ads, Hisense Ads,...)
Because it's technically opt-in. And AFAIK the the checkbox is more explicit in Europe and they probably do a bit ore to comply with GDPR. US is a free for all mostly when it comes to abusing consumers through contrived and unfair ToS agreements.
in the US. My LG TV has put up a giant TOS agreement thing and I can't use any apps until I agree. So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. problem solved?
Me too. I was hoping for a better write up than a pay walled verge article. Yes I'm being lazy but this is hn and I like technical break downs and not just moral panic. I own an older lg tv and I'm not dismissing the societal issues.
Pihole has worked reasonably well upto this point, however the web is catching up, lots of sites that use Admiral refuse to work with piehole running.
I suspect it will only be a matter of time before hardware manufacturers wise up and prevent you from using the TV if you block their ad network traffic.
LG for large parts of the product series use WebOS, which was the OS of the shortlived attempt by Palm to compete in the smartphone market with iPhone, which then changed hands a bit till landing there.
> In July this year, the channel flagged that some LG monitors were automatically installing an app that collected device data and ran pop-up ads for LG’s other apps and even McAfee antivirus. The public pressure from that video prompted an intervention from Microsoft, and ultimately led to LG disabling the pop-up ads.
Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible? I had to fight against Windows installing Alienware command center nonsense automatically because I have a "gaming" Dell OLED. Windows automatically fetched and installed it just from plugging in the monitor, adding a new system tray icon and persistent daemon with these kinds of annoying pop-ups and probably a bunch of security vulnerabilities.
It's completely incomprehensible to me. The monitor works great without it, on both Windows and Linux! I left a negative review on an otherwise good monitor as a result, but Microsoft shouldn't even be entertaining this crap.
> Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible?
Because, as much as we nerds might hate it, it's convenient to a large number of people. They plug in their device and the companion software to fully use all its features just installs itself. They don't have to go to some obscure URL and then locate their exact product. Even in the case you've described, the software likely enables some features of your monitor that aren't accessible otherwise. You don't care about them, but someone might.
The intention is to allow for automatic installation of software that is actually needed for the function of the peripheral - think proprietary cameras or non-standard printers/IO/etc. It's not a bad goal, but it leads to manufacturers abusing it, unsurprisingly, for things that are not, in fact, necessary.
this feature probably began life as "automatically download necessary drivers to make installation easier" and then after some massaging the definition of "necessary drivers" expanded to "anything the manufacturer would like to see running on this PC regardless of how necessary it is for the device to function".
Probably just never give it internet access and plug in an HTPC with some form of Linux (I've heard KDE's Plasma Bigscreen is better than ever, though I haven't tried it myself)
Some TVs will present a popover warning that they have not been able to check for updates for a while, after being disconnected for some time, and you can't close that without letting them connect (even if you are just using the screen to display content from an HDMI slot rather than using any of the other TV features).
FWIW, I've never seen that come up on the five or six TCLs that I've owned over the last decade. I have AppleTVs connected to all of them and never connect them to the internet. So far, so good.
Good to know. I don't buy Samsung anymore anyway. I have two CRG9s and they're already showing same problems after a couple of years. Had a midrange phone from them some years ago - started dying 6mo in (battery, restarts, slowness).
Do they still do it if they've never been connected to a network? So they don't even know what date/time it is relative to their current updates/firmware? Do they display the warning based on a cumulative power-on timer only (much as good quality computer displays have somewhere in their menus buried a figure showing their total cumulative power on hours).
Not sufficient, given reports of TVs and other devices automatically creating mesh networks. Your disconnected TV could talk to your neighbour's connected one. If anything, I wonder why LG isn't already doing it.
If something is technically possible, one should act as though it is already happening and hope to be wrong rather than refusing to consider the issue until sufficient “proof” is given, by which it will be too late. Doubly so when advertisers are involved, who as a group are economically-incentivized to not care about consent.
This would be trivial to test and detect. Just like every claim that TVs will connect to open WiFi networks if you don't connect them to a network. Yet after years of these claims and being extremely trivial to test not a single shred of evidence has ever been provided.
This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but there is no evidence of some super-advertiser doing. It's not even clear to me that much of the 'fingerprinting' (past basic re-targeting) actually works.
> This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but [...]
Isn't this what people said pre-Snowden? Not that NSA spying is the same as corporate "surveillance capitalism", but if companies can make more money off it and the technology exists, it seems prudent to assume companies are trying it.
There was evidence of the NSA intercepting international communications before Snowden, but for some reason that didn't seem to make much of a lasting impression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
It's also significant to note that while the government is quite bad at keeping 'problematic' behavior secret, companies are much worse at it.
Analogously, there's evidence that companies will make extensive use of available techniques (browser fingerprinting, cookies, etc.) to track and surveil users without their knowledge and often against their will. The exposure of that arguably also hasn't triggered an effective backlash against those companies. So, as with the pre-Snowden evidence for domestic communication interception by the NSA, I think there's ample evidence of the willingness of companies to exploit whatever technologies they can in order to surveil users.
That is an article saying that mesh networking frameworks exist. It does not support the GP claim of smart TVs creating mesh networks across different owners.
I’ve heard rumors of that, and also of TVs shipping with cellular modems with which to phone home. I don’t know if either have been confirmed, but it would be ridiculous for such a thing to be legal.
It's a longstanding, and obviously false, rumor. It would be trivial to prove that these things connect to open wifi networks to phone home, but no one has ever proved that they do that, because they don't actually do that. It would be a little harder, but still very easy, to prove that they connect to cell networks, but no one has proved that they do that either, because they don't actually do that either.
Keeping them disconnected from wifi is sufficient.
Cellular modems seem unlikely, because both they and the service plan they'd need are too expensive to be justified by any benefit to the manufacturer.
Not so far fetched when your advertising revenue is in the tens of millions of dollars.
They just need this revenue by tv to be higher than the price of the mobile plan per tv. For a few Gb per month it may be relevant in the not so distant future.
Yes. Considering 90%+ of users will just connect their TV to their WiFi, shipping a cell modem with every TV to catch that last 10% seems like bad ROI.
I could however see this happening in the future in response to regulation. For example some "think of the children" rule that makes TV makers responsible for blocking mature content.
It’s perfectly legal to put a cellular modem in a TV, but not without disclosing that to the FCC and on product labels. This and the mesh network thing for TVs are (currently) a conspiracy theory, which sucks because it muddies the waters in advance of it inevitably happening in reality.
That's not really sufficient. It could still phone home if it falls back to IP addresses. You should be blocking it at the firewall level, not just with DNS.
But me personally, I wouldn't ever connect any of these devices to my network.
It’s still scanning (or at least listening to) all the other devices on your local network, like your phones, PCs, etc. It collects an inventory and if it ever happens to get Internet access, uploads that data.
Then they are not smart TVs anymore. More precisely, they couldn't offer the features one expected from such. Think about a smartphone without internet connection.
I don't mean to be dismissive, but isn't this old news? Hasn't it been the case that _all_ "smart" TVs have been spying on users since they came out? I've personally operated as if they are: my TV is not connected to the internet. At least, not through my internet connection. It's not on my wifi, nor is it connected to my LAN.
This is straight up dystopian level spying. Streaming microphone inputs all the time, knowing everything that is displayed on the screens via object recognition and stuff. Scraping your local network. If I’m not mistaken there is the possibility for the tv to connect to public/open networks to send this stuff without you knowing. Magically syncing with your phone. It’s truly terrible, and a class action is all but guaranteed to come. Gamers nexus has a great video on this.
We knew they were reporting back our watching habits of the built-in stuff. Then we learned they were doing video capture on HDMI ports to report back on what we watched on external sources (Xbox, Apple TV, etc). Then we learned that they did botnet-like stuff in the background even when they were switched off.
NOW we're learning that they're spying with their internal microphone when switched off.
What's the incentive for these manufacturers to do this?
Are they getting paid for the data (e.g. we'll pay you $100M to install spyware), or are they trying to be an ad platform, or is it simply analytics gone out of control?
Get get to make money off of you for the rest of your life. They'll sell ads to companies, and they'll sell your data to anyone willing to pay enough for it.
Which NEC commercial display do you have? How do you like it for normal TV duties? What tradeoffs were you willing to make when you bought it compared to the features which were available in consumer-focused "smart" TVs?
Are you confused between TVs selling your viewing habits using automated content recognition (which they all do and is well documented), vs TVs finding nefarious ways to still upload that data even after disabling network access? Because the latter is conspiracy theories and there's no evidence of it happening (and it would be trivial to verify if it was).
I wish there was some regulation that would force TVs to have a "dumb" mode. When the colors on our previous living room TV started to go out my dad ended up buying a new huge Vizio during black friday for really cheap. He left it to me to set up, since I'm the tech guy of the family, as you all probably understand.
I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in (or at the very least the option was so well hidden I didn't see one). Of course the sign up asks for PII like my name and phone number.
Vizio was bought out by Walmart a while back, with the intent of expanding Walmart's advertising empire.
It's really unfortunate that the TV market has ended up the way it has. My family still has a few CRTs going that have been working every day for decades, just turn it on and TV immediately starts playing. I miss that level of simplicity.
> I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in (or at the very least the option was so well hidden I didn't see one). Of course the sign up asks for PII like my name and phone number.
The only solution we have to this is to return the TV as defective and buy something else until you find something that works without an account or an app. A sane country would have regulations that make spying on you illegal but our government works for corporations instead of the public so they'll never protect us when there's money to be made off of us.
I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in
I missed the part of your comment where you put it back in the box and returned it.
(Yeah, I know, understandable reasons. But that's exactly what I would do if it were going in my house.)
This is one of the many reasons I haven't owned a TV for the last 5 years. I just watch stuff on the computer, or not at all. It's actually nice not having it looming over me.
"Commercial displays" are "dumb mode" TVs. Alternatively, you can get an Apple TV and keep the TV off networks or in network jail.
Samsungs commercial grade signage displays have become quite smart and so have LGs.
My research is a few months old, but at the time Vizio looked like the least bad option, largely because a lawsuit had pushed them to narrow what they collect.
The Koreans are taking a huge risk destroying the trust they've built over the last 30 years with this incessant spying and adware. Both LG and Samsung are engaged in this and it could open the door to Chinese rivals like TCL and HiVision. Not because they're much better but because discoveries like these will leave a bad taste in people's mouth whenever they want to buy a new TV.
They need to put a stop to this or they'll start losing market share fast.
Can this spying and tracking be so lucrative that they'll risk alienating their customers over it?
You mean THIS TCL? https://ads.tcl.com/
Or THIS Hisense? https://nexxen.com/acr-data/
They all use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) and collect profiling data to feed into an Ad service offering.
Samsung started this and is now a leading supplier for targeted advertising on TVs (because old serialized TV doesn't have such an option), this is forcing all the brands to follow and do the same, because:
#A: it creates a revenue stream based on active devices (like Apple/Google has), not just at the time of sales, and
#B: their business partners now demand it (big electronics chains won't sell a TV which will affect their targeted ad promotions)
It would be much more valuable to have proper journalists (sorry) to write an investigative report on this whole Ad-targeting industry, to create pressure not just on some TV-vendors but on all home appliances (including cable-company set-top-boxes, which do exactly the same btw).
The only way out of this is to increase public pressure to the point that a regulation (a LAW!) is drafted and enforced.
This spying is even more prevelant in Korean cars, too. Really sad, because they can be a decent enough product (no worse than any other cheap car) but they are very anti consumer and burning their reputation.
Also applies to GM: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/08/general-moto...
You know who DOESN'T sell the data to outside companies?
Car-vendors which have large competing in-house financial services arms that use the data themselves (VW, BMW, Ford, Stellantis, Tesla,...)
Can you elaborate for a Hyundai owner?
https://www.carscoops.com/2024/08/hyundai-and-kia-are-sellin...
Not because they're much better but because discoveries like these will leave a bad taste in people's mouth whenever they want to buy a new TV.
It ain't just TVs. Now that I've found out that my Hyundai is not only spying on me, but snitching to the insurance company, I might just take South Korea companies off my list for anything.
Also applies to GM: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/08/general-moto...
You know who DOESN'T sell the data to outside companies?
Car-vendors which have large competing in-house financial services arms that use the data themselves (VW, BMW, Ford, Stellantis, Tesla,...)
The issue is not a single company, it's that there is insufficient regulation against this.
99.99999999% of consumers will not notice any difference
Yeah, sadly most people don’t know or don’t care most likely.
Unless it’s in their face causing them friction they will just continue to use it as an appliance.
I'm sue it's not true, it's probably in the single digits (but they might somewhat influence their friends and family)
Taken literally, you’re claiming that only 80 people on Earth would notice. Maybe a tenth of that if we narrow down what is meant by «consumer». I assume you don’t really believe that?
How is this not a gigantic fine from the EU for some kind of GDPR reason
> How is this not a gigantic fine from the EU for some kind of GDPR reason
The underlying "research" is unfortunately not that clean, but I'd say for two reasons:
1. Because looking at the LG ToS alone, it seems that the devices do MUCH more data-collecting outside Europe
2. GDPR is covering your personal information (WHO you are) and personal identifiable information (data that can be used to infer WHO you are). In a nutshell: If a device (a TV, a phone, a car, a Smart Home device, whatever) collects information to PROFILE you, without collecting data about WHO you are, they are not violating your privacy. The company needs to be VERY careful about not accidentally collecting identifiable information, but as long as this doesn't happen, it's within GDPR.
That said, a proper technical write-up of the issues found, with an investigation by a professional journalist would be very helpful to get things going, put proper pressure where it needs to be and dismantle this Ad network business-model of all those TV-manufacturers (Samsung Ads, LG Ads, TCL Ads, Hisense Ads,...)
Because it's technically opt-in. And AFAIK the the checkbox is more explicit in Europe and they probably do a bit ore to comply with GDPR. US is a free for all mostly when it comes to abusing consumers through contrived and unfair ToS agreements.
The opt-in is bollocks. I am a LG owner and quite technical and used to legalese too. This will get them fined in Europe.
in the US. My LG TV has put up a giant TOS agreement thing and I can't use any apps until I agree. So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. problem solved?
Is there anyone who has done a technical write up and investigation into the firmwares?
Like reverse engineering how the software on the TVs work.
Also what third parties are involved.
I have a feeling there must be some third party vendor selling the same toolkit that manufacturers use.
Would be nice to figure out if it's possible to send junk data to the endpoints.
Gamers Nexus has a 2h video doing reverse engineering and a lot of tests
Me too. I was hoping for a better write up than a pay walled verge article. Yes I'm being lazy but this is hn and I like technical break downs and not just moral panic. I own an older lg tv and I'm not dismissing the societal issues.
Pihole has worked reasonably well upto this point, however the web is catching up, lots of sites that use Admiral refuse to work with piehole running.
I suspect it will only be a matter of time before hardware manufacturers wise up and prevent you from using the TV if you block their ad network traffic.
LG for large parts of the product series use WebOS, which was the OS of the shortlived attempt by Palm to compete in the smartphone market with iPhone, which then changed hands a bit till landing there.
> In July this year, the channel flagged that some LG monitors were automatically installing an app that collected device data and ran pop-up ads for LG’s other apps and even McAfee antivirus. The public pressure from that video prompted an intervention from Microsoft, and ultimately led to LG disabling the pop-up ads.
Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible? I had to fight against Windows installing Alienware command center nonsense automatically because I have a "gaming" Dell OLED. Windows automatically fetched and installed it just from plugging in the monitor, adding a new system tray icon and persistent daemon with these kinds of annoying pop-ups and probably a bunch of security vulnerabilities.
It's completely incomprehensible to me. The monitor works great without it, on both Windows and Linux! I left a negative review on an otherwise good monitor as a result, but Microsoft shouldn't even be entertaining this crap.
> Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible?
Because, as much as we nerds might hate it, it's convenient to a large number of people. They plug in their device and the companion software to fully use all its features just installs itself. They don't have to go to some obscure URL and then locate their exact product. Even in the case you've described, the software likely enables some features of your monitor that aren't accessible otherwise. You don't care about them, but someone might.
But it should require asking the user if the installation is acceptable.
"But that would confuse users with a complicated interface"
- some product manager, who was thinking of additional ad revenue while trying to sound like not an asshole.
The intention is to allow for automatic installation of software that is actually needed for the function of the peripheral - think proprietary cameras or non-standard printers/IO/etc. It's not a bad goal, but it leads to manufacturers abusing it, unsurprisingly, for things that are not, in fact, necessary.
this feature probably began life as "automatically download necessary drivers to make installation easier" and then after some massaging the definition of "necessary drivers" expanded to "anything the manufacturer would like to see running on this PC regardless of how necessary it is for the device to function".
Is there some way to jailbreak your tv and run som open source os on it? Or something like that?
Not exactly sure what I’m after, but the problem is acute and widely prevalent, so there has to be some solution.
Probably just never give it internet access and plug in an HTPC with some form of Linux (I've heard KDE's Plasma Bigscreen is better than ever, though I haven't tried it myself)
You can root most LG TVs but I'm not sure an alternative firmware exists or if it's even feasible.
https://cani.rootmy.tv/
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/lg-tv-block-mini-how-to/2551...
My understanding is that this is difficult due to DRMd content refusing to work with Free operating systems.
Because yes, this nonsense would never fly in a world where Software Freedom enabled a competitive market for TV operating systems.
All smart TVs should be disconnected from the internet. Use an AppleTV or similar.
Just disable wifi. Occasionally factory reset, hook up to wifi for firmware update, then disable again.
Some TVs will present a popover warning that they have not been able to check for updates for a while, after being disconnected for some time, and you can't close that without letting them connect (even if you are just using the screen to display content from an HDMI slot rather than using any of the other TV features).
Which ones? I'd be happy to know the brands.
FWIW, I've never seen that come up on the five or six TCLs that I've owned over the last decade. I have AppleTVs connected to all of them and never connect them to the internet. So far, so good.
Samsung TVs certainly do. A massive PITA.
Good to know. I don't buy Samsung anymore anyway. I have two CRG9s and they're already showing same problems after a couple of years. Had a midrange phone from them some years ago - started dying 6mo in (battery, restarts, slowness).
Do they still do it if they've never been connected to a network? So they don't even know what date/time it is relative to their current updates/firmware? Do they display the warning based on a cumulative power-on timer only (much as good quality computer displays have somewhere in their menus buried a figure showing their total cumulative power on hours).
Not sufficient, given reports of TVs and other devices automatically creating mesh networks. Your disconnected TV could talk to your neighbour's connected one. If anything, I wonder why LG isn't already doing it.
Unless you have evidence, please stop spreading this rumor.
Could you link to these reports, the ones with evidence?
If something is technically possible, one should act as though it is already happening and hope to be wrong rather than refusing to consider the issue until sufficient “proof” is given, by which it will be too late. Doubly so when advertisers are involved, who as a group are economically-incentivized to not care about consent.
This would be trivial to test and detect. Just like every claim that TVs will connect to open WiFi networks if you don't connect them to a network. Yet after years of these claims and being extremely trivial to test not a single shred of evidence has ever been provided.
How would you test this?
If they form a mesh and route traffic via one TV that acts as an exit node you can check the packet TTLs.
This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but there is no evidence of some super-advertiser doing. It's not even clear to me that much of the 'fingerprinting' (past basic re-targeting) actually works.
> This seems paranoid. There are many things which are technically possible, but [...]
Isn't this what people said pre-Snowden? Not that NSA spying is the same as corporate "surveillance capitalism", but if companies can make more money off it and the technology exists, it seems prudent to assume companies are trying it.
There was evidence of the NSA intercepting international communications before Snowden, but for some reason that didn't seem to make much of a lasting impression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
It's also significant to note that while the government is quite bad at keeping 'problematic' behavior secret, companies are much worse at it.
Analogously, there's evidence that companies will make extensive use of available techniques (browser fingerprinting, cookies, etc.) to track and surveil users without their knowledge and often against their will. The exposure of that arguably also hasn't triggered an effective backlash against those companies. So, as with the pre-Snowden evidence for domestic communication interception by the NSA, I think there's ample evidence of the willingness of companies to exploit whatever technologies they can in order to surveil users.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23659191/amazon-sidewalk-...
That is an article saying that mesh networking frameworks exist. It does not support the GP claim of smart TVs creating mesh networks across different owners.
I’ve heard rumors of that, and also of TVs shipping with cellular modems with which to phone home. I don’t know if either have been confirmed, but it would be ridiculous for such a thing to be legal.
It's a longstanding, and obviously false, rumor. It would be trivial to prove that these things connect to open wifi networks to phone home, but no one has ever proved that they do that, because they don't actually do that. It would be a little harder, but still very easy, to prove that they connect to cell networks, but no one has proved that they do that either, because they don't actually do that either.
Keeping them disconnected from wifi is sufficient.
Cellular modems seem unlikely, because both they and the service plan they'd need are too expensive to be justified by any benefit to the manufacturer.
Not so far fetched when your advertising revenue is in the tens of millions of dollars.
They just need this revenue by tv to be higher than the price of the mobile plan per tv. For a few Gb per month it may be relevant in the not so distant future.
Yes. Considering 90%+ of users will just connect their TV to their WiFi, shipping a cell modem with every TV to catch that last 10% seems like bad ROI.
I could however see this happening in the future in response to regulation. For example some "think of the children" rule that makes TV makers responsible for blocking mature content.
It’s perfectly legal to put a cellular modem in a TV, but not without disclosing that to the FCC and on product labels. This and the mesh network thing for TVs are (currently) a conspiracy theory, which sucks because it muddies the waters in advance of it inevitably happening in reality.
See: Amazon Sidewalk
Which manufacturers and which TVs?
Otherwise it's just some 10+ year old rumour
I have connected it to my network and then blocked it off the internet via Pi-hole. That way, I hope, it'll not try to scan for other open networks.
That's not really sufficient. It could still phone home if it falls back to IP addresses. You should be blocking it at the firewall level, not just with DNS.
But me personally, I wouldn't ever connect any of these devices to my network.
It’s still scanning (or at least listening to) all the other devices on your local network, like your phones, PCs, etc. It collects an inventory and if it ever happens to get Internet access, uploads that data.
All smart TVs should not come with WiFi or Ethernet controllers.
Then they are not smart TVs anymore. More precisely, they couldn't offer the features one expected from such. Think about a smartphone without internet connection.
I don't mean to be dismissive, but isn't this old news? Hasn't it been the case that _all_ "smart" TVs have been spying on users since they came out? I've personally operated as if they are: my TV is not connected to the internet. At least, not through my internet connection. It's not on my wifi, nor is it connected to my LAN.
This is straight up dystopian level spying. Streaming microphone inputs all the time, knowing everything that is displayed on the screens via object recognition and stuff. Scraping your local network. If I’m not mistaken there is the possibility for the tv to connect to public/open networks to send this stuff without you knowing. Magically syncing with your phone. It’s truly terrible, and a class action is all but guaranteed to come. Gamers nexus has a great video on this.
We knew they were reporting back our watching habits of the built-in stuff. Then we learned they were doing video capture on HDMI ports to report back on what we watched on external sources (Xbox, Apple TV, etc). Then we learned that they did botnet-like stuff in the background even when they were switched off.
NOW we're learning that they're spying with their internal microphone when switched off.
What's the incentive for these manufacturers to do this?
Are they getting paid for the data (e.g. we'll pay you $100M to install spyware), or are they trying to be an ad platform, or is it simply analytics gone out of control?
Get get to make money off of you for the rest of your life. They'll sell ads to companies, and they'll sell your data to anyone willing to pay enough for it.
https://archive.is/zmCOd
Hardware switches would be plus in modern era. Not just for mics.
Are the WiFi cards on these TV like laptops or soldered on. I wonder if you can atleast disconnect the antenna or remove WiFi chip.
Why? Just don't connect it to the internet.
(Yeah, yeah, when someone actually demos a TV seeking open WiFi APs, then we'll talk. And anyone bringing up ETH over HDMI gets a spankin'.)
I've said it before, but I wish a somewhat trustworthy organization would create a 'DUMB' certification - "Don't Upload My Bits".
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49592375
Several discussions this week, some merged, these not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605424
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605356
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573427
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49575176
Ohh my this website is terrible on mobile
But I was reliably informed this never happens! (Reasons I own an NEC commercial display instead)
Ah NEC. There's a name I haven't heard in a long time. I used to have an NEC monitor.
Which NEC commercial display do you have? How do you like it for normal TV duties? What tradeoffs were you willing to make when you bought it compared to the features which were available in consumer-focused "smart" TVs?
Are you confused between TVs selling your viewing habits using automated content recognition (which they all do and is well documented), vs TVs finding nefarious ways to still upload that data even after disabling network access? Because the latter is conspiracy theories and there's no evidence of it happening (and it would be trivial to verify if it was).
By who? Manufacturers have been public about selling viewing data and put it in their user agreements.