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by drnick112 hours ago |
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upvoteby kazinator10 hours ago|
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So you think that if the TV doesn't have your Wi-Fi password, it surreptititously turns on Wi-Fi and runs cracking software to obtain it anyway?
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upvoteby ethanj801110 hours ago|
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I think the more logical concern would be that it would wait until it could find any potential unsecured wifi to use. I live in an apartment building and there a few wifi access points that I can reach from my apartment with no security. Though one of them appears to be an air conditioner??
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upvoteby kazinator7 hours ago|
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Say the TV finds such an access point and uses it. It phones home and so now the manufacturer now knows that such and such serial # TV is located in that neighborhood.

They still need to tie it to you. If you've not given it a shred of personal information, it has to be fingerprinting via surreptitious audio/video recording, or else by obtaining the purchase info from the retailer (like the name and billing address from your credit card) and matching that by serial number (which would have to be recorded during purchase).

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upvoteby panta4 hours ago|
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I wouldn't be surprised if they did audio fingerprinting. But even if they don't, the third parties who are buying the data can easily re-identify the users by doing data fusion with other sources (smartphone location data from other vendors)
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upvoteby wl10 hours ago|
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Not that I have any evidence it's happening, but it'd be more likely for TV manufacturers to partner with ISPs that offer public WiFi using the access points they rent to their customers.
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upvoteby wolvoleo9 hours ago|
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No but things like Amazon sidewalk exist
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upvoteby quacktopia4 hours ago|
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The low bandwidth always on kindle modems could also be feasibly built into TVs for telemetry, and may be cheaper than the money they could get from selling the data.
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upvoteby jellobyte10 hours ago|
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Thank you. This is exactly what I was thinking reading people who think you need to do more than simply never connect it to your wifi.
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upvoteby _dain_9 hours ago|
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it's not just your wifi you have to worry about. neighbour can have insecure wifi. or deliberately open ones like coffee shops, free municipal hotspots, etc.
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upvoteby giancarlostoro8 hours ago|
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That sounds like a TV manufacturer is going to be having one hell of a lawsuit if they're breaking into other peoples wifi networks.
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upvoteby hellcow7 hours ago|
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Wasn't this exactly what happened in the LG exposé that just came out? It connects to any WiFi network it can, your will be damned.
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upvoteby mmooss8 hours ago|
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There are available IoT networks it could use, though I don't think all of them run over Wifi.
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upvoteby intrasight11 hours ago|
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Honest question. Do projectors also suffer?
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upvoteby hedora6 hours ago|
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The one we have is even worse. It won't really work well outside of things like airplay or chromecast, and those require wifi. It was extremely cheap though.

(It has an HDMI port, but it's clearly a second class citizen in the menus, etc. Default to HDMI on power up is intentionally broken. It's also intentionally designed to turn into a brick if we ever lose the remote. At boot, it puts a screen up saying to press a button on the remote if you want it to display anything else, and that screen never times out. If you plug in an HDMI input, it says "HDMI input detected; press OK.". There's no "OK" button on the projector itself. You have to press the OK button on the remote.)

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upvoteby MrDrMcCoy10 hours ago|
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Not from privacy issues, but all the typical ones from projectors never went anywhere: low brightness, high heat, low maximum operating lifetime, fan noise, and hard to set up (impossible in some places).
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upvoteby darkwater3 hours ago|
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I don't think this apply to most UST projector nowadays. I mean, operating lifetime is probably still an issue, fan noise while higher than a TV (which doesn't have it) is not an issue anymore, heat.. well, come close to my (old, ok) OLED LG TV and you can still warm your hands (although not like the previous plasma one I had, that's true). For the setup I don't know exactly but there are online shops that gives you the 1st setup for free (at the cost of doing the unboxing for you). Also probably nowadays with an LLM almost anybody that care enough to research and buy a projector can do it, I guess.

Yes, I want to buy a projector this Black Friday (Hisense PX3-Pro).

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upvoteby aDyslecticCrow11 hours ago|
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Faar less. A larger fraction of projectors remain dumb HDMI to light converters. Tis been my own plan if i settle on wanting a tv.
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upvoteby sudonem11 hours ago|
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If it has any kind of in-built smart TV style OS - then yes.
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