Sigh... it never ends.
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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Privacy
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This article is utter bullshit normalizing this invasion of privacy by entertainment hardware vendors. "Everyone is doing it" is not a valid defense, it only shows that no one should be doing it and that the laws are too lax and not protecting people as they should.
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How to tell if something is possibly spying on you:
- Can it connect to the internet?
- Is the firmware/software controlled by a corporation?
- Does it have sensors capable of surveillance, like a microphone or camera?
I'm concerned you may not even need to connect it to the internet. It may be enough for a neighbor to leave their WiFi unsecured. The TV may very well watch for one and use it to upload.
It can be even worse than that. It can use other TVs in the neighborhood that are connected to the internet and just proxy it through them. It’s called a mesh network.
Is there evidence of that? Or is this also like saying an unconnected TV might be slipped the WiFi password by a connected dishwasher through a series of ultrasonic beeps? Sure, not impossible, but also not likely in every home.
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Need to put them in a faraday cage.
In fact, maybe your entire house should be a faraday cage
Anytime a company gets caught spying, it's pretty safe to assume they all do it but that company was just the first to get caught.
A bit beyond that, though, if pressed, they'll say they NEED to do it to remain competitive. That's their reasoning behind every evil thing they do. On the rare occasion they call for some law to restrict the industry, it's because their company is having trouble competing.
They'll do anything to profit that isn't explicitly against the law in whatever country they operate in. But they will also do things against the law if the penalty isn't high enough to stop them. They will take into account the social penalty, but if the profit is high, and they run a virtual monopoly, then the social costs are almost always outweighed.
They take everything into consideration but have zero empathy or morals, so that never enters the equation. Profit is all that matters.
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Gamers Nexus said that they assume other brands are just as bad but they only wanted to spend the funds for the one company
Not wanted, had. They would love to do more. And in fact part of the fundraising around this is for that. GN and gamer jesus's only recently turned to heavy investigative journalism. But they don't have a sugar daddy to fund them or dedicated viewing area to sell advertising to. Their situation with alphabet and YouTube is very adversarial as well.
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This is why I thought the "talk to your TV remote" things were all garbage...Involving a fucking microphone and a speech to text algorithm and potentially cloud bullshit just to fucking change a channel? Change the volume level? STUPID. It's much worse than just pressing a fucking button and having the volume / channel change immediately, as well as a needless sacrifice of what little remains of your privacy.
I don't get it with smart switches / smart fans and shit either. Like a light switch already works completely fine guys. I don't know why we need to be able to talk to this shit.
Typing on a TV remote is a miserable experience but we've already solved that problem just put a damn keyboard on the remote already
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Build a cheap PC or buy an NVidia Shield to be your media center. (I actually use a SteamLink to my desktop PC.)
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Never tell your TV your Wi-Fi password.
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Use a wireless keyboard with touch-pad as your remote.
(4. Pirate stuff over a VPN.)
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Personally I have a smart litter box triggering an exhaust fan for 10 minutes every time it cycles.
My A/C turns off if you leave the patio door open for a couple minutes.
I have a light upstairs that I turn red when I'm in an important meeting, like an On Air button.
The foyer light turns on when you open the front door at night.
There are useful things to be done, and most of my info doesn't leave the house.
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the big mistake is buying a smart tv in the firs tplace.
It's hard to find dumb TV. But you can just use a smart TV without connecting it to the internet.
That's a bit of a misconception, TV's have other potential paths to try and get themselves connected. Say connecting itself to an unsecured network or uploading through a data stream over HDMI. Or you sell the TV and the next person connects it to the internet (TV's can store a lot of data too).
The only real ways to cripple a Smart TV is to either destroy the ability to spy (disconnect mics etc.) or properly contain it in a firewall.
Also - lots of ISP-provided routers have secondary unsecured networks as part of a network for customer devices that you may not even realize are coming from your own router.
How can I find out more about these?
Is there any evidence this happens? Why would manufactures go to the trouble of making a nefarious hacker TV when 99.9% of buyers are just going to type in their wifi credentials when prompted?
You should watch the gamers nexus video. The LG TVs they tested automatically look for open wifi networks to connect to and once connected to a network scan for all devices on the same network and send that back to the mothership.
Glad mine is maybe 10 years old at this point.
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Solid article. Definitely recommend the read.
Here’s the video by Gamers Nexus the article is talking about. It’s 2 hours and 15 minutes long.
Oh shit I accidentally clicked accept on the terms for voice and I'm incredibly inebriated.
Wendell was having a blast for sure. 🤣
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My Samsung tv literally phones home and Netflix 24/7 even when it is off. My “Sniffet” app screams with nothing but Samsung and Netflix garbage URLs. So does my pi-hole. It’s insane how any of this is actually even legal.
FYI the default blocklist included with PiHole does not block smart TVs. Strongly recommend Perflyst SmartTV List:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/master/SmartTV.txt
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See the same on my pi-hole. Chromecast is especially evil.
They can get around your Pi Hole with DNS over HTTPS these days. I don't have one. Do you find yours still works well?
I've censored so much traffic that it has issues with certain things. If there wasn't a price crisis I had planned to build my own Android TV box with an old Intel NUC or such but not at these prices. I've not looked into anything about DNS over https. I am behind a VPN at the router though not sure if that helps.
I appreciate the info! A TV box really doesn't require much in the way of hardware. Have you considered picking up an old laptop? I personally use a SteamLink to stream from my desktop. (Pretty rare that I want to watch TV and game at the same time.)
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For people thinking about opening up their remotes and removing the microphone. You're free to do so as you please, but also note there has been zero evidence of any remotes doing any sort of recording unless the button is pressed.
Now this isn't to say the recording isn't forwarded to the mother ship once you do press that button, but the main concern has been the mic inside the TV. The remote has pretty limited batteries, if it were to record all the time it would run flat in a matter of hours. So if your remote does a year or so on the batteries, it's not recording anything unless you press the button to do so.
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Not if you still have a 1080p dumb TV from 10-12 years ago (I forget exactly its so old).
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