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.
The best thing to do is not support this immoral garbage through apathy or ignorance.