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> Three air fryers, made by the Chinese brands Xiaomi, Tencent and Aigostar, wanted to record audio on their owner's phone for no specified reason > Meanwhile,

> Three air fryers, made by the Chinese brands Xiaomi, Tencent and Aigostar, wanted to record audio on their owner's phone for no specified reason > Meanwhile, smart TVs made by Hisense and Samsung which were tested by Which? asked for people's postcodes during set-up. Samsung's TV app also asked for permission to be able to see all the other apps on the user's phone. Information is the valuable bit here, the devices themselves don't produce enough value as they can be sold only once. Data can be sold multiple times.

g_p 2y ago
Which? is a UK brand, and in the UK it's fairly common to see the postcode (or rather the first couple of digits) used to determine which regional programming a user wants, given the (to some extent historical) TV regions and channel numbering. I've seen "always offline" pre internet era satellite TV set top boxes do this, and use the first 2 or 3 characters of the postcode to work out the correct region and show the correct programme guide information and channel numbering. I imagine that on a modern internet enabled device this might also pre-select some of the "watch later" apps, based on your region. Doesn't mean there's no wider issue about data gathering and exfiltration over the internet, but just to add some regional context as this postcode point might not be as egregious as it sounds at first.