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All smart TVs should be disconnected from the internet. Use an AppleTV or similar.
by sroussey 1mo ago
All smart TVs should be disconnected from the internet. Use an AppleTV or similar.
- ihsw 1mo agoAll smart TVs should not come with WiFi or Ethernet controllers.
- samus 1mo agoThen 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.
- Cpoll 1mo agoNot 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. Edit: Getting pushback asking for evidence (fair). Most recently I read it in an HN thread a few years back. I thought it was a TCL TV, but I can't find it anymore. It wasn't Samsung's WiFi Direct, which I don't think was ever on by default. Lacking better evidence, I'll admit I'm probably wrong and no TV has been documented doing this (yet).
- deadbunny 1mo agoCould you link to these reports, the ones with evidence?
- Arainach 1mo agohttps://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23659191/amazon-sidewalk-network-coverage https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/28/23659191/amazon-sidewalk-...
- azernik 1mo agoThat 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.
- Lammy 1mo agoIf 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.
- nickff 1mo agoThis 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.
- privong 1mo ago> 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.
- nickff 1mo agoThere 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 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.
- privong 1mo agoAnalogously, 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.
- hammock 1mo agoHere is maybe what he was remembering from HN: > Our Samsung fridge’s manual says it’ll automatically and silently mesh network with any Samsung TVs in range, use AI and hidden cameras to recognize what’s in the fridge and when we use it, then have the TV inject targeted ads into programming based on its findings. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45742208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45742208
- account42 1mo agoWild. Still, paraphrased like that it triggers my "sure, that totally happened" detectors.
- tshaddox 1mo agoI’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.
- nickff 1mo agoCellular 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.
- AlexandrB 1mo agoYes. 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.
- drdexebtjl 1mo agoPhones already have modems that do Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth in a single chip. It may at some point no longer be economical to manufacture a Wi-Fi only modem.
- TheJCDenton 1mo agoNot 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.
- bluGill 1mo agoCell plans are very cheap when you are a company looking for low bandwidth off-peak service for a lot of devices. As individuals you can't get those deals, but companies can. I don't know if TVs have a cell modem, but it isn't unreasonable to say they could. As a different poster mentioned, the FCC needs to know about this though and so it will be documented.
- Jonnax 1mo agoWhich manufacturers and which TVs? Otherwise it's just some 10+ year old rumour
- coldpie 1mo agoUnless you have evidence, please stop spreading this rumor.
- josefresco 1mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA
- coldpie 1mo agoPlease point me to the timestamp in that video that supports this claim: > reports of TVs and other devices automatically creating mesh networks. Your disconnected TV could talk to your neighbour's connected one.
- mitxela 1mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49615448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49615448
- ginko 1mo agoSorry but it's up to the vendors to prove that abuse is technologically impossible (through open source software and cryptography). Closed source software should always be assumed to do the worst thing possible.
- nullfield 1mo agoSee: Amazon Sidewalk
- krtkush 1mo agoI 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.
- orev 1mo agoIt’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.
- phraun 1mo agoThat's why you put IoT crap into an isolated vlan with its own ssid, enforce device isolation for that ssid across all WAPs, and enforce isolation on the vlan level with your switches to cover any hardwired devices.
- dogcow 1mo agoThat'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.
- krtkush 1mo agoThe only reason it is on my network is that I need it for home automation (via home bridge). I'll have to see what else I can do.
- chorizo 1mo agoFirewall rule that prevents the tv from accessing the internet (by mac address if using dhcp, or set a static ip for the tv). Or stick it in separate quarantined IoT subnet with your devices.
- Nas808 1mo agoSome of these devices also now use DoH to bypass any DNS-level filtering.
- dspillett 1mo agoSome 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).
- mszcz 1mo agoWhich ones? I'd be happy to know the brands.
- richjdsmith 1mo agoSamsung TVs certainly do. A massive PITA.
- mszcz 1mo agoGood 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).
- account42 1mo agoBe specific. Which models and after what time. Mine has been running for two years now without insisting on updates.
- bradleyankrom 1mo agoFWIW, 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.
- dspillett 1mo agoI don't recall off the top of my head. It was covered in one of Louis Rossmann's rants so you might find information on the consumer rights wiki he talks about.
- indymike 1mo agoJust disable wifi. Occasionally factory reset, hook up to wifi for firmware update, then disable again.
- thesuitonym 1mo agoWhy do you need to update the firmware at all?
- drdexebtjl 1mo ago“or similar” like what? Streaming sticks suffer from the exact same problem. The Apple TV is the only device I know of in this space whose business model is not selling your data to the highest bidder.
- squeegmeister 1mo agoCurious how a PS5 measures on the spyware scale
- slowin 1mo agoMuch better than an Apple TV is a Linux machine running Kodi.
- _fat_santa 1mo agoPart of the issue is many TV's these days are essentially bricked until you connect them to the internet to "activate".
- account42 1mo agoOnly if by "essentially bricked" you mean you can't use their "smart" functionality.
- RetpolineDrama 1mo ago>All smart TVs should be disconnected from the internet. Not good enough. The device has sufficient storage for YEARS of conversation data. You connect it once to update the firmware and boom everything is backfilled. Your neighbor sets up an open SSID? It all gets out.