Nearly Half of LG Smart TV Apps Contain Residential Proxy SDKs

Comments

• homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Smart TVs are almost ideal proxy hosts. They sit on the same home network as everything else, but they do not feel like computers, so people rarely audit them like computers. There is no battery drain to notice, no cellular bill to spike, no app switcher full of suspicious background activity. A TV can stay plugged in, signed in, and online for years while the user thinks of it as furniture.

  That changes the consent equation too. Most people do not have a working mental model for what it means to sell access to their residential IP address, no matter what device they are using. On a TV, the gap is even wider: a one-time prompt navigated with a remote can disappear into the setup flow, while the app keeps monetizing the connection long after anyone remembers what they accepted.

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• aeronmelon@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This is why my TVs don’t go online or connect to a network.

  They have audio/video wires to devices that do.

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  • Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yup, mine is plugged into my PC as a monitor, and has no net access. A PC can do everything the tv could do and more, and I can run a firewall/adblockers on it.

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• thenextguy@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  This is about apps that people install after setting up the tv. Not the TV OS itself.

  Mostly garbage apps and games that most people don’t use from the LG and Samsung app stores.

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• CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Pick up open WRT because it’s easy to give it net access while isolating TV and all IOT from everything unwanted.

  I’m not convinced it’s enough because bluetooth can go around wifi for dwvice to device.

  Everything is spyware. Everything.

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  • thenextguy@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Or just don’t install crap games or apps from LG or Samsung app stores.

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    • CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I think you are missing the point.

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• kibblebits@quokk.au ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Can’t have anything nice.

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• toiletobserver@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I wonder if my pihole would stop this nonsense

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  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It might stop some depending on the block lists you have. You would have to set a firewall rule to block all other DNS, DoT and DoH servers so nothing can bypass your block lists. Blocking DoH servers is hard because it looks just like HTTPS. Even then, it could still connect to a hard coded IP address instead of doing a DNS lookup.

    A better option would be to use an IPS to detect and block suspicious connections from the TV. Ideally, you would just keep it offline though.

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