cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51634640
A new Gamers Nexus investigation found a retail LG TV actively scanning the local network for phones, laptops, smartwatches and other connected devices, while also capturing microphone audio when the screen appeared to be in standby. The investigation found voice data being stored locally even after the TV was disconnected from the network, with the queued data uploaded once connectivity returned. Researchers also uncovered webOS vulnerabilities that could potentially turn the television into a remotely controlled surveillance device. The really unsettling part isn’t just the advertising angle. It’s the fact that a consumer television can sit inside your trusted network, enumerate other devices, access a microphone, store collected data locally and communicate with external infrastructure. Put that same device in a corporate office, hospital, hotel or conference room and the security implications become considerably more serious. I went through the investigation in detail, including the network scanning, microphone behavior, ACR, webOS attack surface, offline data collection and practical mitigations
Don’t connect TVs to your network.
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?
how is it collecting and sending data if not connected to a network?
i read the article, it still needs a connection
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.
i just misread their post originally
You know how some people rent their wifi routers?
That’s the backbone
if it’s connecting without your explicit permission each time how us that not a worm
Because it is done by a wealthy corporation. See also: rootkits from Sony.
that shit should have been a jail term
but i stopped buying sony over it
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lol i missed the entire second part
and i meant i read the article
not you read the article
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yea because
read
read
read the same, i was trying to be clear
i’m saying you are right, relax, i must have skipped over your second sentence on
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Read and read and reed and reed. Love english
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. They may also implement an always-online model and they’ll justify that it’s necessary to monitor users for “age verification purposes”. ATP better to get a good monitor and use it as TV cuz cable or satellite boxes are either way gonna be provided by the network companies so that’s there
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 could see them doing it anyway as OTA broadcasts include rating data.
That said, if it’s a family TV, you’re never going to put everyone on it, just the oldest one anyway.
Impossible - no one would buy them, and that idea would die.
[citation needed]
A citation… of a would be scenario? My what a confusing comment.
I think their point is that by and large consumers are stupid and willing to put up with almost any garbage like that. What makes you think otherwise?
Where is the original citation showing you cannot use a tv disconnected, without setting up an account?
This whole thread is nonsense.
What emb said. When in the history of the universe did consumers reject a product like that? You do realize Alexa and Google speakers are still very popular and tons of people wear watches with GPS, sleep tracking, heart rate tracking and always turned on BT?
This is the only correct answer. Discussion over.
So I should connect it to someone elses network?
Works for now, but my fear is when that may not broadly be the case.
Although usb stick firmware updating is super annoying
The TV should just act as a TV with input ports. Why update the firmware?
I’ve had to update for ALLM support and such. So feature support. I don’t care for the TV’s OS updates
I wonder if any of such devices use nbiot or alike…
“We own the glass, we own the TV, we own the living room. We know who is in an LG home.” –LG President of Ads
These are the Gamers Nexus videos these articles are referencing btw. Support them and their work. Get some cool shirts and physical media while you’re at it.
I’m watching the main one right now (your second link). Holy shit.
Really makes one wonder…How many fucking data points do these assholes need telling them we’re too fucking broke for their game and want their heads on pikes?
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.
At least 13k
It’s not just LG. It’s all of them.
And, the cheaper the TV, the more often and intrusive these settings are.
It’s honestly better to just have a bare wall and a projector.
It’s honestly better to just have a bare wall and a projector.
Consumer projectors come with the same “smart” shit as TVs these days. Just don’t connect either to WiFi. Problem solved.
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.
It’s honestly better to just have a bare wall and a projector.
From a privacy point of view: yes. From every other: not so much.
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.
Fuck LG, this is creepy AF
It’s hard to find a dumb TV.
Monitors and projectors are going the same way. Not connecting them might not be enough.Time to learn how to use a soldering iron.
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.
Why are you concerned with the USB ports?
I think he’s suggesting said OS could be installed using them.
Thanks, threw me for a loop when they recommended trying to unsolder a chip from the sbc and expecting it to still work as a tv at all.
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.
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Bosch fucking dishwashers do this, once connected there is no way to disconnect them so I sink all its outgoing traffick at the router level
Complete garbage
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.
That costs money.
You CAN do this with a few products of diff companies with the help of home assistant and plugins BUT many companies are pulling off support OR restricting features to its own app and giving free access to the bare minimum voa protocols like matter and all. I read somewhere on reddit that a robovac company had matter access technically but only the vac on off switch access was there and none of the other basic functions. For that you need their app. But again, still some companies do support all it’s features on home assistant. Many light fixtures, switches, ACs and much more support it. So yes you can run them locally BUT it all depends on the manufacturer how much control they are willing to provide openly
exactly! it’s so useless they had to hide regular features under the wifi connection to force customer’s hand
Why would you connect a dishwasher to the internet? Setting a timer can tell you just as well if the dishes are clean.
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
Planned obsolescence is great isn’t it. /s I try to keep my appliances on life support as long as I can.
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.
The problem’s that what’s presented is a cheap machine vs an expensive machine. Guess which one spies on you?
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
That’s not true at all. The LG OLED (C5, G5) are very expensive. I paid over 1300$ for my C4 last year and just learned that LG is pulling this shit.
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.
The majority of people do not
realizecare how much information is being recorded and what it’s used for.
What exactly is the alternative? Every tv manufacturer is doing this. Buying a commercial display isn’t the answer.
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)
Imagine when it’s turned on…
This is why I don’t let my TV watch porn.
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.
This is terrible and useless security advice. There is actually a whole lot you can do besides just giving up.
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.
Are you building CPUs and routers in your garage?
There’s no “might” here. It’s why high-end TVs are cheap.
… 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.
Doesn’t anything with a speaker have an inherent shitty microphone?
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?
It’ll scan for open networks and use them, regardless of whether you enabled wifi or not.
Can you join it to an ssid and black hole its traffic?
Not sure. I suppose if the code expects a response that’s more than just a
200 OK, the app could determine that it’s been black holed and try to connect to other networks.
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.
Not to be disrespectful but your very particular case as an individual is irrelevant. I just wanted to share information regarding how scummy these devices are. If some people are not affected, good for them. However, that’s not the case for a lot (if not most) people.
So get power strips and turn them off when you’re not using the TV.
Also keep them off wifi/network and you should be good unless they’re smart enough to try to connect to any open network they can find like some sort of malware
Is this anything a VLAN and Pihole can’t fix?
Edit: looks kind of impossible to prevent, if it can access an open Wi-Fi nearby.
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.
