And according to the article the data collection runs even if it's disconnected. So, don't ever connect it to the network. As soon as you do everything gets uploaded.
Could I burn a hole through a WiFi chip with a soldering iron?
Only one way to find out.
Oops I meant to reply to the person saying Gamer's Nexus found LG televisions connect without permission to any insecure Wi-Fi networks within range in your neighbourhood. Otherwise it'd seem a bit extreme to burn a hole through it :p
My TV is too old for this to matter yet but I'd research a way to physically disable network hardware before buying any specific model next time.
It’s not sending them, just collecting them. Then it sends them the moment you connect. They even transcribe speech to text via mic, according to GN they send about 4GB/month… IN TEXT FILES!
How much storage could it possibly have?
The person you are replying to said that the smart TV collects spy data onto a hard drive even when it's not connected.
Then once the TV acquires a connection, it dumps the entire drive worth of spy data to the mothership.
The danger here is obvious, I think.
This would’ve worked just a few years back but due to shitty “age verification” laws, even TV manufacturers willl force users to create an account the very least for the TV to even start up.
Surely only for "smart" features but without enabling any of that shit, you shouldn't get any age verification prompt.
I wonder if any of such devices use nbiot or alike...
I'm watching the main one right now (your second link). Holy shit.
Enough that they can tell with a decent amount of certainty whose social credit score should be lowered, once that gets inevitably introduced /s
(I don't think that conspiratorially.. It's probably just data harvesting and extreme greed.)
That social credit works only as long as you want to buy shit. If you’re like me and don’t even own a credit card, these assholes have zero power over any aspect of my life because anything they own/control, I wouldn’t want to use anyhow. They are only professional capitalists because the public are amateur consumers.
Unless it gets to the point where it's impacting where you can live or work
Self-employed. Can live and work wherever.. You don't get rich, but you also don't get trapped..
sarcasm not necessary here. this is exactly where this is going.
The issue is that they don't care, they sell the data to others and they get to spin it while doing it. Its not selling data (that you are broke) to an advertiser, its the idea of that advertiser falling behind if they don't buy your data (that you are broke).
Apparently not solved. They can connect to open (and hidden) networks without your consent.
Per the marketing chief at LG; (paraphrased, from memory) "we own the glass, and we know everything beyond the glass."
They can connect to open (and hidden) networks without your consent.
That's a wild claim and either I accidentally skipped a paragraph in the article or you should cite a source. Quick googling doesn't show up anything of that sort for me.
It's in the 2h long Gamersnexus video. The TVs aren't connecting to open WiFi networks but connecting to other LG TVs within range. That forms some sort of mesh network that lets the TV access the internet. Apparently it's not illegal wardriving because "they own the glass".
I don't have any specific evidence on hand, but I do know a lot about the technology and companies involved from working in adjacent fields (cloud architecture) and it is absolutely plausible that they can and do. If they are not doing it already (and I believe it is highly doubtful that at least some devices do not already do this) then it is certainly on their roadmap. Many consumer IoT/media devices have invisible, hidden wireless networks built in and have for years. If it's advertised, it may boast some sort of "quick connect", "auto configuration" or other convenience feature, it may be genuinely required for low-latency/quality-of-service (for example on most modern TV services which supply the channels by IPTV behind the scenes), but it's always on, it's always listening, and it's only a friendly partnership agreement away from being used for whatever "legitimate" purposes a company may dream of.
Tech surveillance is extremely out of hand and has gone so far beyond anything would consider reasonable, I understand that you would instinctively reject it as too extreme to be believable. But in the industry it's completely normalized and they don't even give it a second thought, it's just business as usual.
I'm looking for a source as well. The "apparently" I used was supposed to cover the whole comment, but I can see how it didn't.
The video goes into detail, and could be staged, but comments seem to support the idea anyway.
Amazon devices are known to do this with other Amazon products to create a mesh.
It's not outside the realm of possibility.
Look for articles about amazons sidewalk network and devices that connect to it without any kind of authorization from users.
That shit has been around since the echo came out and it’s open to any manufacturer.
There’s are lots of articles but my phone is too slow to load them at the moment.
Projectors have become amazing.
Projectors have become amazing.
Yeah and consumer oriented ones have their own apps and Google TV integration and the like, so no idea how a different image displaying tech would be a solution to privacy invasive TVs.
But they require dark room. Where I live in summer it gets dark at 23:00 so you need great curtains or you can't see anything most of the day. If you have curtains you have to watch everything in complete darkness. This is fine for a movie night but people like to watch news or watch a game with their friends over some food. You also need extra device to handle apps like Jellyfin. Things like BT can be more complicated to set up (my TV handles multiple BT devices nicely).
Projectors are basically great for one or two things (home theater and gaming) but are bad for everything else.
I was at my parent’s house, trying to add some items to the smart TV. They started listening to these awful AI interpersonal dramas read by AI, on YouTube.
My thought was to add some podcasts and their Audible account, for more selections. Maybe they’ll still only listen to that, even so. You can’t add much to a smart tv. No podcasts. No podcast app. A pretty spartan selection of apps. Even something as large and mainstream as Audible. No go. Libby? Yeah, right.
I don’t get it. What’s the point? Just buy a monitor, jack it into a PC for media, and have everything you want minus this telemetry.
Just buy a monitor, jack it into a PC for media, and have everything you want minus this telemetry.
I have some bad news for you:
My TV has no Internet connection, but does connect to my gaming desktop. I agree with you. There’s no reason TVs should not just be dumb displays. I do also have the Apple TV, but it never ever shows ads and is a one-time purchase. The day it starts showing me ads is the day it meets the bin.
There’s no reason TVs should not just be dumb displays.
At least, no reason that benefits the consumer. There are strong monetary incentives to spy on customers and sell the data that's collected.
Once again I’m reminded of Season 1 of Black Mirror. Second episode? Worker drone is “home”, “relaxing” in his sleep cubby and the walls are a barrage of ads. Occasionally he taps to pay credits to shut one down as the rest continue, as casual as anyone scrolling in boredom.
Or a shut down golden retriever in those old, now illegal learned helplessness experiments.
Fingers crossed the new Apple TV box is announced this week, I am waiting to finally switch over
jack it into a PC for media
Even a proprietary streaming stick like FireTV would be an improvement because it only collects telemetry from the stick itself and not devices connected to other HDMI ports.
modern ones are soldered directly to the board and integrate bluetooth into the same chip and removing that chip form the board could remove the ability to use bluetooth functions and the remote, however!!!!!!! most have usb ports!!!!!! lets make new operating systems and fucking delete their file system, load a new os that lacks the abilities these manufactures have.
The hardware is whatever but if we remove the file systems that its preloaded with it won't be able to load any of its preinstalled shit. If we mod the operating system we can mod some of the shit the hardware is capable of doing through the software and coding. Kinda like how windows 11 is known for lowering ram speed.
It is like trying to find a new car that doesn't have one of those fucking screens instead of a real console.
I keep my tv dumb by not connecting it to a network.
Yeah, what kind of idiot wants an internet-connected dishwasher?
How about an AI-powered pair of chopsticks?
In a perfect world?
I'd love access to diagnostic data. Is the filter starting to clog? Is any part not working as intended? I'm a big fan of preventative maintenance, but also really bad at sticking to an arbitrary recurring schedule (e.g., clean the filter every 6 months). This could also be accomplished with Bluetooth and an offline-only app on the phone.
In the real world? Nobody provides this, and the privacy risks aren't worth it.
I do have my dishwasher on a ZigBee power meter to 1) track energy use and 2) give me a good-enough estimate of time remaining by starting a 2h timer after it starts.
This could also be accomplished with Bluetooth and an offline-only app on the phone.
But WHY! If those diags are important, then just put them in the local display of the machine itself.
Sadly, the only way to change most of the settings or running a cleaning cycle is via the app. It’s insane.
No way in hell id buy that. Soon as the app is dead so is your dishwasher, at the whim of the manufacturer
My TV is wired to the router but blocked from WAN access.
Only connected to the internet to install jellyfin on it.
Why wouldn't a company this dedicated to advertising just install a cheap cell network modem in them? You're talking pennies on a device that costs hundreds of dollars.
While this is possible, ongoing network costs are involved with that. Also, hard to hide a cell network modem.
Not so sure if that is done when many people connect their device to their WiFi anyway, if they are forced to because some settings can be changed only with the app?
I don’t care that companies thought they’d get away with this, the problem is have are the people buying this shit! This should’ve been enough to get people to just refuse to buy it but no.
And the bigger problem isn’t what we know they can do, you have to think about what it ‘could’ do.
Even if you never connect this stuff to the internet, they could still track all this stuff locally. Once that happens, which no doubt it will if not already, what happens if suddenly you get arrested for something, they confiscate the TV, download all the stuff tracked, and oops, something even more incriminating… maybe you watched an illiegal movie on jellyfin! 😲
Look at all the “People will never let it happen” that has happened pretty much unchallenged… you’ll have no privacy, and you’ll all be paying for it!
The problem is not that people are buying this willingly, it's because they don't know. If you present them two rougly similar options, but one of them is a spying machine, people will choose the other one. This stuff should not be legal in the first place.
That's true, but the law should be the first line of defence against practices like this - you can't expect every person to do thorough research on every appliance they buy.
Yeah, caveat emptor worked in an era where there were a lot of sellers and not that many ways to screw over customers, especially as most people weren't buying a wide range of products. I should be able to assume that my appliances aren't working against me, especially when it's becoming more difficult to purchase ones that don't
The majority of people do not realize how much information is being recorded and what it’s used for. If there was an easy way to track down how a telemarketer got your information, a lot more people would freak out and demand change.
Scepter.
(I dunno if they're doing it yet or not but I bought a dumb TV and a dumb monitor from them and I really hope they stay dumb)
This is why I don't let my TV watch porn.
... Well great, now I have to check whether my television has a goddamn microphone for some reason. I didn't think to check because it's a television.
Never connected it to the Wifi though.
Does it have voice command capability?
My LG TV is blocked from my network and always has been. However, the andriod tv connected to it is a different thing, so it's more or less lost cause anyways and I haven't had enough incentive to block the android box from the rest of network since it'd need some tweaking so that casting and other occasionally used features still work. And even if I'd block the android tv box there's still our cellphones gathering all the data, so I'm pretty much just running things on hopium that EU offers at least some protection on my data.
Well, if you watch the Gamers Nexus video, you'll see that even if you don't connect your tv to the internet, you're still not safe.
I haven't watched the video, but how can an offline TV transmit its data to the mothership?
If I understood correctly, the tv can connect to open networks it finds and transmit data even if you disable wifi.
Mine is several years old by now, I doubt that the firmware on that has all the options enabled. And also I live in a pretty rural area, there's no open networks around.
But something LG has achieved with this, I'm going to look for other brands when I'm on a market for new TV. Which I hope will be many years in the future, maybe there's a change on products while waiting and something better is available by then.
If you are going to have smart devices, put them on their own VLAN. They should not have access to the rest of your network. TVs shouldn't be connected at all. Use a PC or android box if you want to stream stuff.
The issue in this case is that they apparently use text to speech locally, store that information on the device itself, and then if at any point in the future gets connected to the internet for any meaningful length of time (be it by a subsequent owner) it will then be sent on to LG.. for safekeeping of course /s
The deep-dive by GamersNexus is pretty in depth.
Just desolder the mic
That would work if you can open the case without breaking it. Modern TVs are usually clipped together and the bezels are really thin. It's very easy to crack the panel when trying to get the case apart.
Others do too
So get power strips and turn them off when you're not using the TV.
unless they’re smart enough to try to connect to any open network they can find like some sort of malware
Uhhhhhhh, bad news there. Many companies have been found to have their stuff make hidden networks and share info these days. I am sure you could figure out a work around if you are savvy enough, but the normal dood? Fucked and pretending this is normal.
Which is why I said just get a power strip. Can't hack a TV that's not plugged in.
Yeah maybe there's way to make a file explorer for them. Maybe there's ways to jailbreak them. We focus on phones a lot, webos was on the hp bought out palm phones back in the 2010's.
We find out the operating systems, we jailbreak them and completely remove their programming and then, in-turn we can mess with hardware settings.
So let's start making a TV Linux that doesn't suck or make an Ubuntu TV version or a KDE TV version.
They can't force people into using their OSes forever. The only thing I know is it's like Pandoras battery trying to disable the wifi from the hardware.
Possible that they are piggy backing on other hidden networks. I remember there was a whole thing with Samsung years ago with their stuff doing something like that, and there are a few patents around that propose hidden networks from the "internet of things" days.
I just don't want to even truck with this nonsense, where the fuck is the line before we just stop using these things? I know there must not be a line, since we are talking about circumventing our shit spying on us like it is normal.
All of this needs to be illegal, but piggybacking especially does. Circumventing the will of the end user (aka the person who should be considered the owner) as for what the product in their possession, home, and use does shouldn't be tolerated
That’s what I do at home with a Ubiquiti setup. Seperate network with client isolation enabled.
For now the only known thing to do that works is for it to never to be connected to any network.
Also if a smart tv was connected to the WiFi there is a possibility it won't forget that until factory reset.
Could connect the tv to the guest wifi network which would prevent it from accessing your local network. Plug in an android tv box of some variety and connect that to the network and you can cut the tv off f4om internet entirely.
If you set the pihole as your primary DNS on your router then all network traffic goes that way anyway. Set up google as a secondary in case your pihole goes down. Or configure a second pi hole for resilience and set that as the backup.
Fuck that, become ungovernable. If the pihole is down, the tv is down.
Build your own router and
Redirect all port 53 to your pihole
Block port 853 on that vlan
Block these ips on that vlan
https://github.com/dibdot/DoH-IP-blocklists
I had a raspberry pi working as a router but when my provider gave me a zyxel router i didnt need it anymore as its super customisable.
Will i need to go back to my openwrt router to get this working? Since its saying github actions update the list?
In opnsense, fetching an alias list file is native
https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/aliases.html
Zyxel gear is legit as i understand it, but i don't know their system.
The GN investigation discovered that LG makes the TVs mesh with each other as well. So even if you don't connect your LG to the internet, it can connect with other LG devices in the neighbourhood and exfiltrate data that way.
Oh! Thats sneaky.
my guest network is in a different vlan by default.
Afaik thats standard for guest networks. They have internet access but not local network access. Otherwise whats the point in them?
I want to care.. I really do.. But untill ceos and those who decided this was OK are killed, it will continue. Money means nothing to these evil people.
I keep mine offline and fully turn it off via the power switch on the extension cord. My steam deck is my smart TV instead. Yay Linux!
Invidious
A browser.
I need to get my network and vlans setup sooner rather than later.
anybody know when this started? i don't have my tv connected to the network, and have not updated the firmware in 2 r 3 years.
Every device with a CPU, WiFi module, and microphones are vulnerable to this. If you don't want to be vulnerable, build your own hardware, software, and network. There's no other option.
Or just don't allow corporations to put microphones and wifi into literally everything so that we CAN have some options. Even a no frills basic TV wouldn't need a CPU if it just uses analogue connections. Those are still being made for now. So yeah it's possible to have a TV and not have to live in fear of it spying on you.
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
Don't connect TVs to your network.
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