Every time this comes up I feel obligated to add the following:
1) Samsung televisions spy on your mercilessly. They collect everything they can, including screenshots at regular intervals and send them back to Samsung so that they can sell this to "partners". They are not a FAANG and don't have anywhere near their level of security expertise. I have second-hand but reliable information about their security approach, and "laughable" doesn't begin to describe it. Assume that whatever you watch on a Samsung TV is being relayed to multiple state-level spy agencies.
2) Even if you buy a flagship Samsung television for five figures, it's virtually guaranteed that within a year or two they will release an update the slows it down to molasses. These things have controller boards with miniscule amounts of RAM in them, and they use the same firmware across all models. When a new model with more RAM is released, they add more features, causing all older models that self update to start swapping to the pagefile. I've seen several Samsung televisions across several model years and price points get slowed down until response times are up to 2 seconds for most actions. This is "unusable garbage" quality, for crazy money.
NEVER buy a Samsung television, ever. You're treated as the product, not the customer, despite paying them a lot of money.
PS: This isn't even the only display calibration cheating that they do! Practically all Samsung models use a "shop mode" that cranks up brightness to 11 and oversaturates the colours. Even in "normal" mode Samsung televisions have forced "enhancements" that can't be turned off. There is no "calibrated mode", because it would look like trash on these over-priced televisions.
> use a "shop mode" that cranks up brightness to 11 and oversaturates the colours
Practically every TV does this. It makes them look better in brightly lit shops, and any TV that doesn't will look washed out next to all the ones that do even if they are actually better. Always review display settings when you get a new visual device, even if you buy online (devices are set this way out of the box rather than relying on the showroom making any tweaks, so all purchase methods are affected).
Can't tell if you're being facetious or not. If a technologist can't change an IP address on a TV's network settings then they're probably in the wrong community.
It's the attitude of "well tech nerds are fine because they can dumpster dive through a bunch of settings pages to turn off some egregious shit and setup the rest of the infrastructure needed to do so (buying and setting up a pihole/ signing up for someone else's service and then having to monitor/manage/diagnose when that falls over); oh the normies? Errr, screw them"
I think the wider point here is that technologists represent a small portion of Samsung's target market. Most people won't know or care how to change an IP address in the TV's network settings.
Whereas I fall into the "I could, but why should I?" category of people who mostly try to buy devices that don't actively spy on me in the first place (doesn't work so well for modern phones or games consoles).
Right, and I said I'm not justifying the need to do this. It pisses me off that I have to. But at least I can try and help out and provide a solution that will work for the majority of this community.
"Whereas I fall into the "I could, but why should I?" category"
Same here.
I've three Samsung TVs of various age none of which has been connected to the internet (in fact, only one has that capability). Knowing what I know now I would never
connect a Samsung TV to the internet - in fact I'd never buy another Samsung TV set, phone or other appliance again.
The people behind Samsung who authorized the spying as well as those who've attempted to fool testers into believing the specs are better than they actually are have shit ethics - there's no other way of putting it more politely (as this is a public forum, I've toned down my language considerably).
I've been around in tech and engineering quite some time and I am alarmed at how the ethics of engineering people have waned over recent decades. In recent decades, we've regularly seen unethical engineering practices introduced into products in ways that in the past would never have even been considered let alone that would have ever made their way to market. Samsung is not alone, remember the Volkswagen fiasco; now it's commonplace - Microsoft et al.
In this laissez faire environment sans ethics it seems that almost any behavior is acceptable. I often wonder why those in my profession who are responsible for the introduction of such products no longer object to designing them in unethical ways. (If engineers objected on mass to such practices, management would have difficulties enforcing such policies.)
As I see it, two approaches are needed: the first is the need for proper legislation that would outlaw such practices with the aim of protecting consumers, and the second is publicly exposing those who are responsible for them (legislation should ensure violators cannot hide behind a corporate façade). Engineers would object to designing unethical products if they knew their names were associated with them and that they were being held responsible.
Moreover, professional bodies such as ACM and IEEE, etc. should be proactive in this by expelling members found guilty of unethical practices associated with their profession. This would go a long way to stopping such practices, I reckon.
Incidentally, for some decades I was a member of both the IEEE and
ACM and I withdrew from their membership because they failed to uphold their own ethics. Especially the IEEE, it rarely, if ever, questioned unethical and questionable engineering practices. It seems to me these organizations should be embarrassed into actively doing something to stop the slide in ethics amongst their members.
I'm also of the opinion that we need some deep research into exactly what has happened to the engineering ethos over past decades. Laws and sanctions as mentioned above may provide a partial solution but finding the underlying cause and rectifying it is clearly the ideal one.
I guess every other parent comment here is talking about general public. In other words, what's the ratio between people here @HN that can change a DNS and the global Samsung market?
> They collect everything they can, including screenshots at regular intervals and send them back to Samsung so that they can sell this to "partners"
Isn't this a gross violation of privacy and be clearly illegal? I could be playing my home videos with very private content. Add to that copyright violation if they are using screenshots of my content for commercial purposes.
Yes, it’s a gross violation of privacy. People watch porn on their TV, including home-made porn they made themselves. This is being captured and sent back to Samsung.
The bigger danger is that you could be watching something on a streaming system that could land you in jail in an authoritarian country. No amount of HTTPS encryption or VPNs will save you if the decoded image is sent raw back to Samsung — where it is not safe and secure!
I have one of the earlier mid range 4k Samsungs. About two years in they gave it an update that added a Lote of bloatware, some of their own TV streaming channels full of Samsung ads. And for a bit I had Adguard home on my router and Samsung endpoints where the biggest thing blocked by far, and it was the only Samsung device in he house.
Now I have the internet disabled on it and just use an Xbox for smart stuff, will probably get an Apple TV next time they upgrade it.
I use an Xbox aswell, since my TV has an open security hole that the manufacturer refuses to patch, and because it sends unspecified data and fetches updates over an unencrypted connection.
Mind you, the Xbox does just as much snooping, but at least the Xbox fetches updates over encrypted channels and doesn't let anyone on the same network have root access to the TV's linux installation.
True with the Xbox, bat at least imo MS is slitty more trustworthy with my data than Samsung. The tv was doing more network requests than the xbox and a few Apple devices combined.
Every thread dozens of people say, "just don't connect!" They can connect to open networks such as Amazon sidewalk and other deliberate corporate IoT sabotage, and soon I'm sure we'll see the first televisions that require connection to even pass a signal from the HDMI port.
The best thing to do is not support this immoral garbage through apathy or ignorance.
And every thread says they can connect to open WiFi without providing any proof that they do. It would be trivial to test and prove but no-one ever does.
I'm not saying they wouldn't do it but I'd prefer some proof before judging them (without having to shell out to be the guinea pig).
On a Sony TV, at least on my one (before I yanked the wifi antennas out) you could just create an open network and then sit watching the Wifi settings screen on the TV and watch it just jump right on.
If you're really concerned about proof, just go to a hifi store and turn on your mobile hotspot without a password - I bet you could get a TV somewhere to connect with minimal effort.
The reason there are likely so few reports is because a)open wifi networks are very rare b)you can't really tell that the TV has done it, until it shows its hand (as in the case above, notifying the user that it auto-updated itself.)
> If it’s not showing you ads, it’s not connected.
If it’s not showing you ads, it might not be connected. It could still be connected and performing all sorts of shenanigans without necessarily showing you any ads.
Any chance you could upload the part of the manual that says that? That's insane - I have a Samsung TV and generally thought I was safe by disabling internet access.
Samsung (and the rest of the TV industry, Samsung is just the worst of the bunch) has fucked up trust in them extremely hard and they are not showing in any way that they have learned from the past or how they plan to re-gain consumer trust. Until that happens, it is foolish to assume they would never implement something like "connect to an open wifi".
See you’re moving the goalpost here. You went from they can to they could. That’s exactly the point of people who require proof it has happened.
When we have proof of one manufacturer connecting to an open wi-fi network to send its snooping data, we’ll have a a reckoning on our hands. I guarantee it.
Of course I'm moving goalposts. This kind of shit should be banned before someone gets the idea (or audacity) to implement it. The time for "move fast and deal with the law later" is over - it's obvious that the technical possibility is easy to implement and hard to detect for the average user, it's obvious that there is nothing good for the customer that comes out of it, and so the law should for once be proactive instead of reactive.
Wireless networking is something I usually avoid in a technical capacity, but this seems like something worth messing around with (and reporting back on).
Should be a fairly straightforward bit of airodump. Even if you don't capture the handshake, you can cross-reference the macs of stations associated with the AP of interest against the mac of your device. If the mac is randomized to a sufficient degree that you can't cross-reference it I guess you'd need to capture the association, but that shouldn't be a problem if you can turn the tv off/on and it does the thing consistently.
Interesting you mention that. My partner just bought a Samsung monitor and set it up in the house
Then she sat down nearby and used her iPhone. Immediately a message popped up on the monitor telling her it had detected her iPhone and did she want to set up some app or remote thing
It was incredibly creepy and I imagine it was implemented by scanning for nearby Bluetooth devices
Is it possible to setup an open wifi "honeypot" on some old Android phone to 'capture' the TV?
Yes, this should not be necessary, but actual legislated protections for this kind of behaviour don't exist, and aren't even being discussed at any high-enough level that makes it appear that action may be closer than a decade away (unless maybe in Europe, in which case may be only five years away).
Heh I would not be surprised if in the future TVs start shipping a DOCSIS modem in the cable TV backend and put up deals with major network operators to allow a low bandwidth back-signalling channel.
Well yes, but then you're basically buying an expensive monitor and will need a second device to be the "smarts".
I personally use an Apple TV for this, but in general this can be frustrating for users that just want their Smart TV to work without spying on them or implementing centrally triggered scheduled obsolescence.
This is a bit like saying you should "never" turn on your new car's engine and should immediately swap it out for a third-party one, because every knows Manufacturer X leaves ticking time bombs in their engines.
This is why consumer protection agencies are created by governments!
> This is a bit like saying you should "never" turn on your new car's engine and should immediately swap it out for a third-party one, because every knows Manufacturer X leaves ticking time bombs in their engines.
I don’t think it’s at all like that.
If anything, it’s more like saying don’t use your car’s built-in navigation, and instead, use another connected device for navigation.
The engine is a critical part of a car — without it, it can’t function. Period.
A TV doesn’t have to be smart to operate it, and you can’t buy a TV without it, even though it’s 100% not necessary, especially if you already have another device for that.
Again, it’s like cars with navigation — completely unnecessary, especially if you have another device for that.
I find this argument weird. Most people don’t want smart TVs. Dedicated smart devices are just better. Even non techies will probably feel this way because the TVs suck and the remote control interface is clunky and confusing. There’s simply no option to buy a dumb tv that isn’t something weird like a monitor or digital signage.
Imo nothing beats a laptop with a wireless mouse and keyboard. So much better than a shitty remote. Browsers and Google are familiar. Can also do games. Can access whatever sites you want or things the smart device wouldn’t approve of. All of these devices like Apple TV and fire sticks seem pretty dumb to me.
Because it's just so convenient to have to plug your laptop in via an HDMI cable and have it permanently tethered to your TV, and I just love sitting on the couch attempting to move a basically nonresponsive laser mouse on the furniture surface.
Cost of chromecast+remote: $30
Cost of secondhand laptop + wireless keyboard/mouse: $250
- Most people don't know what they're missing re: clunky interface controls
- Most people want a single feature-complete device that doesn't take up an HDMI port or require another set of cables to connect (yes, that's trivial, even enjoyable, for 'us', but 'they' are not 'us').
Most people have no idea what their smart tv can do, and are confused by how to use it. In my experience it’s hardly something they sought. Just anecdata
Exactly. I purchase an Apple TV for each screen in the house, whether that screen is dumb or smart. Actually, I have three screens and two Apple TVs, so for movie nights I move one Apple TV over to the projector so we can watch a movie there (Apple TVs are expensive!)
I also had a Fire Stick and a Roku but refused to keep using them after reading their privacy policies (their UIs are also complete and utter trash, they are so terrible compared to Apple TV)
I think the advice to never allow a screen to connect to Wi-Fi is reasonable, and I tell my family the same. In the past I have give them old Apple TVs or help them set one up to ensure that they are not allowing spyware on their network
Agreed that this needs to be handled by government, as the level of data abuse by these companies is unacceptable
IMO, not a big deal. Google was basically giving away chromecasts with google tv, and if that's still not happening, ONN makes one that works fantastic for 20 dollars. With voice search and all if that's your thing. Both are way faster and easier to use than a built in smarts, and both you can take with you on the go if you want.
It's pretty unlikely that you'll have ethernet over hdmi happening unless you go way out of your way to have it. It's not really something that just happens spontaneously, you need your devices to have it and the cable to support it. I think eARC canibalized the channels it used too?
> Even if you buy a flagship Samsung television for five figures, it's virtually guaranteed that within a year or two they will release an update the slows it down to molasses. These things have controller boards with miniscule amounts of RAM in them, and they use the same firmware across all models. When a new model with more RAM is released, they add more features, causing all older models that self update to start swapping to the pagefile.
Samsung's approach to security is writing a memory mapper for the camera app which can map any memory region to userspace and is by default world accessible. I'm not expecting anything.
I just recently upgraded my LG B8 OLED TV to a C9 model by switching out the main board with one I got from eBay. Now I have 4K@120Hz, HDMI 2.1, and VRR ;)
If Software Freedom Conservancy win their lawsuit against Vizio for GPL violations in their TVs, you will probably be able to install open source Linux distros with Kodi on any Vizio TV and soon afterwards lots of other smart TV vendors will be similar. Allowing the vendor operating system to remain on the device after you purchase it basically means spyware these days.
I don't think the GPL covers signing keys, just some mechanism for installation. Allowing addition of additional signing keys is a good way to do it, just like UEFI Secure Boot does things. There are also plenty of phone vendors who allow bootloader unlock after wiping the device DRM/etc keys too.
> They are not a FAANG and don't have anywhere near their level of security expertise.
What a weird thing to say. Are you suggesting that it's fine that FAANG companies also spy on you mercilessly, because their security is ostensibly better?
When Google collects data about me, I’m relatively certain what I’d going to happen to that data — it gets folded into a bazillion models and is used to sell me shit. When Samsung collects data about me, I have absolutely no clue what happens next with that data. It’s not necessarily better or worse, but it’s a very different bit of privacy calculus you need to work through.
You may have forgotten the part where it's directly fed to the NSA. PRISM existed and still exists, and there is ongoing collaboration between every large tech company and the NSA.
I have a QN90A, the ads are annoying but it's fine and it's a great TV overall. It's basically just a tiny banner ad at the bottom right of the home screen.
Personally I take much bigger risks day to day by doing things like biking to work, so I'm okay with the risk of my TV sending data back to advertisers.
BTW, I'm pretty sure the only Samsung TVs that are five figures are the 98" beasts. My 75" QN90A was $1600, and the middle tier models are much cheaper and look great.
I think you would have avoided all the downvotes with, "Double negatives are very much an English language thing and are commonly used in every day language", since American and British English both involve double negatives in colloquial usage.
I only know a handful of Americans and we often talk about the differences in our language. Even had an Australian join the conversation once too and it was a very interesting discussion.
The use of double negatives stood out as something more commonly used in British English however I accept it was a very small sample size!
It does parse. It's not like what you say, it more like "this apple has a bruise and some blemishes but I'm still happy to consume it". Television has had annoying ads for much of the past century and millions of people still found enough value in it to watch it.
I can't speak for the parent comment, but when I use such a grammatical construct, I mean that although it is suboptimal, I am putting up with it. It does not mean that I think it is ok.
It took me a little while (and it seems like they managed to add some more domains at one point) but I’ve successfully blocked all outgoing connections from my TV and removed the ads
I’ve got a Samsung frame… and you need the net to get the picture screen going … ! Which I quite like as a feature. Even though I put all our digital tv through an Apple TV.
I have an LG TV, and the ability to have Apps on the TV, without a plugged in decide - Netflix, BBC iplayer, ITV Hub, AppleTV, Twitch, Youtube etc. makes for a very pleasant, seamless experience.
I too have an LG TV that I quite like. It’s fun seeing WebOS in use and I actually like the built-in apps. Then again, it doesn’t show ads. The day it does, it’ll never see the internet again and get fed from an external device.
Just because one tolerates something doesn’t mean they think it’s ok. Besides, what’s the other option? Any “smart” platform needs an internet connection, and will show ads because of that.
> Personally I take much bigger risks day to day by doing things like biking to work, so I'm okay with the risk of my TV sending data back to advertisers.
It's up to you how you feel about the privacy issue, of course, but that's not how risk works. It's additive. The fact that you take other risks, bigger or smaller, doesn't rationally change the value of this risk.
Steel-manning, they could have meant that the larger risk makes this smaller on insignificant. Adding 1 to 1,000,000,000 also results in a larger number - not that I think the actual compared risks could be given these numbers on any scale, but to their mind the TV privacy risk may be too insignificant to bother with when there are easier and larger risks to work on.
1) Samsung televisions spy on your mercilessly. They collect everything they can, including screenshots at regular intervals and send them back to Samsung so that they can sell this to "partners". They are not a FAANG and don't have anywhere near their level of security expertise. I have second-hand but reliable information about their security approach, and "laughable" doesn't begin to describe it. Assume that whatever you watch on a Samsung TV is being relayed to multiple state-level spy agencies.
Ref: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...
2) Even if you buy a flagship Samsung television for five figures, it's virtually guaranteed that within a year or two they will release an update the slows it down to molasses. These things have controller boards with miniscule amounts of RAM in them, and they use the same firmware across all models. When a new model with more RAM is released, they add more features, causing all older models that self update to start swapping to the pagefile. I've seen several Samsung televisions across several model years and price points get slowed down until response times are up to 2 seconds for most actions. This is "unusable garbage" quality, for crazy money.
NEVER buy a Samsung television, ever. You're treated as the product, not the customer, despite paying them a lot of money.
PS: This isn't even the only display calibration cheating that they do! Practically all Samsung models use a "shop mode" that cranks up brightness to 11 and oversaturates the colours. Even in "normal" mode Samsung televisions have forced "enhancements" that can't be turned off. There is no "calibrated mode", because it would look like trash on these over-priced televisions.