6 ms·
I'd never give a Samsung device unfiltered internet access.
by NoiseBert69 11mo ago
I'd never give a Samsung device unfiltered internet access.
- procaryote 11mo agoI'd never buy another samsung device
- edoceo 11mo agoI just avoid all Samsung CE.
- zero_shift 11mo agoAt the risk of a smart-ass reply, I think you could say the same for almost any consumer electronics Even if you don't suspect malfeasance / advertising / surveillance, a lot of these devices and their software are sloppily developed and highly insecure
- OhMeadhbh 11mo agoA couple years ago I thought my fridge was appropriately blocked from the intarwebs. But a router update flipped the bit on activating the default guest network (which I normally keep turned off.) So for about 6 months my fridge was getting out to the net via the guest network. I found out about it when I got a call from my ISP asking what the heck was going on. Apparently a bot net had found my fridge and was doing all manner of bad things. Moral of the story is... always double check your router settings to make sure enshittified iot devices aren't making you look like a newb.
- prmoustache 11mo agoSounds weird, why would you give your fridge your wifi password in the first place? Well the real question is why would you buy a connected fridge in the first place. Not that I visit fridges alleys in stores on a regular basis but I have never actually seen one.
- GreenVulpine 11mo agoTheir TVs will connect to open networks without asking you. Perhaps the fridges do the same.
- prmoustache 11mo agoAre there evidence it is really happening? Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood? My neighbors aren't tech savy yet they use the wifi configured provided with the router which has a passphrase. I believe even in McDonalds you get the wifi password only upon purchase in the receipt. Most open networks I still encounter are in big stores such as IKEA or airports and you still have to register to connect. I doubt the signal woukd reach even the closest houses anyway.
- pseudalopex 11mo ago> Are there evidence it is really happening? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45867034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45867034 > Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood? Some neighborhoods are mixed use. Some residences are in dense buildings. Some people configured guest networks with no password. Some ISPs made their home gateways captive portal access points.
- prmoustache 11mo agoHaving a guest network doesn't mean it is open. It can just means you have a passphrase that is different than other home devices and that you may be isolating them in a separate VLAN. I would never run an open network on my home connection, there are way too many legal risks unless you can log who is connect to it and when.
- pseudalopex 11mo agoNo one said guest network meant no password.
- 11mo ago
- emeril 11mo agoomg - why let your router update? :) most updates are downgrades in my experience unless it addresses something very specific
- qwertox 11mo ago"unfiltered internet access"? How would you even know what to filter? Block it entirely, and hope it that doesn't connect to your Samsung phone via Bluetooth or WiFi and use it as a proxy.
- margalabargala 11mo agoSome devices refuse to to operate if they can't make DNS queries.
- delaminator 11mo agoThen give it a DNS server to look up.
- margalabargala 11mo agoYes exactly.
- the8472 11mo agoThen they can exfiltrate data over DNS.
- margalabargala 11mo agoI mean, only if the DNS server is one run by the company in question. I own nonzero such devices that hit 8.8.8.8 as an internet access sanity check so I have to keep just that IP allowed for them and block all other traffic.
- kaoD 11mo agoDNS is a hierarchical protocol. You can exfiltrate data as long as the DNS server is resolving recursively.
- margalabargala 11mo ago
- prmoustache 11mo agoHow long until they ship with embedded 5G modem? Would you wrap your Samsung devices with alu foil?
- taikahessu 11mo agoSoldering your TV in 2026 sounds like real fun ...
- pndy 11mo agoI think they may go the easier way first: with online only OOBE where you cannot access all tv features until you acknowledge and accept the "legal" stuff first. You know, bit like Microsoft forces you to create online account after installation is done
- miki123211 11mo agoThere's always going to be enough of a "dumb TV" market among the elderly / linear-only / no internet crowd to make that an extremely bad idea. Sure, some (high-end) TVs might do this, but definitely not all of them.
- josephg 11mo agoDumb tvs exist today; they just sell for a premium to make up for the lost adtech sales revenue. I suspect this will continue. Ads and no privacy for poor people. The wealthy & well educated will have tvs that don’t spy on them.
- qwertox 11mo agoOr connects to the Samsung TV of your neighbor, who definitely granted all access to the internet.
- zzyzxd 11mo agoThis idea has been around since at least a decade ago. The truth is, only a fraction of customers care about ads or privacy, and only a fraction of technical people in that group are capable of doing network filtering (VLAN, MITM, DNS blocklist, whatever). The absolute numbers are so small, as long as manufacturers can extract enough value from the remaining 99% of customers, they just don't care. I have had a lot of friends amazed by the fact that when they connect to my home Wi-Fi they stop seeing ads. Zero of them interested in implementing something similar in their home.
- rjzzleep 11mo agoSamsung is truly the worst of all big tech companies. All their first party apps contain ads. They kill hard fuses if you want to change things, and meanwhile bundle the devices of a large segment of the costumer base with first party Israeli spyware with full system and background install access. I bought a Samsung watch once, had to reverse it to enable functionality that was advertised a year before but never delivered. It died because the watch decided to suck in water during a reboot while swimming, they quoted me almost the full price to repair it, even though it was clearly a software bug that caused another advertised feature (namely it's ipx rating) to fail. And while I also wouldn't give Xiaomi iot devices on the network full internet access, at least I can use those things normally.
- jm4 11mo agoBesides the fact that Xiaomi devices are completely untrustworthy, they are usually great pieces of hardware. I bought a Xiaomi vacuum years ago. Everything was in Chinese and I had to watch a youtube video to figure out how to set it up. Besides that, the whole unboxing and setup experience felt like an Apple product. That vacuum was light years ahead of the iRobot it replaced. Incredible product and cheaper than just about everything else available at the time. That's when I realized American tech was toast. I agree with you 100% about Samsung. They make nice hardware, but the software experience is among the worst in the industry. I don't know how they can be considered a premium product. I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware. I'm surprised they don't inject ads into the photos you take. They have ads everywhere else - even in the phone dialing app. Their TV's are still good as long as you don't connect them to the internet. Once they start putting LTE radios in them to download ads without wifi, I will be done with those too.
- torginus 11mo agoOut of the cheap phones I bought over the years, Xiaomi was the only manufacturer that didn't load up their phones with crapware backdoors. Samsung and Oppo was shiped with one of those crapware backdoors that installed apps beyond your back. Eventually I got fed up, and started using hand-me-down iPhones for second phones.
- ainiriand 11mo agoMuy samsung odyssey g9 monitor connected for the first time through my phone, also Samsung.
- beAbU 11mo agoI'd never give a Samsung device ~~unfiltered~~ internet access. FTFY