Comment by bonestamp2
4 years ago
Don't put your wifi credentials into your TV, then you've effectively got a giant monitor/commercial display.
If you're feeling especially crafty, open the back of your TV and disconnect the wifi/bluetooth board. It's a discrete board in all of my TVs of different brands. I assume they build them this way so they can use the same network board design/production for years and just upgrade the main logic board in newer models.
I can't find any references right now, but someone once mentioned TVs shipping with SIM cards embedded so that they could collect telemetry even if you didn't connect it to your network.
Even if it isn't/hasn't happened, there's nothing to stop someone like Samsung sticking cellular modems in their TVs to work around you doing this.
If we think about it like Air-Tags too, popular enough product, it'll just connect to one of your neighbour's TV's which _is_ online.
I remember years ago, Vodafone gave me a "free" femtocell because signal in my home was poor. They neglected to mention the fact it broadcast a public cellular signal which allowed other Vodafone customers to use _my_ internet bandwidth.
> there's nothing to stop someone like Samsung sticking cellular modems in their TVs to work around you doing this.
True. Although, if they put that SIM card on the bluetooth/wifi network board that I'm disconnecting then I'll be ok.
I would be surprised if they used cellular technology for this though (from a cost perspective). I'd expect a lorawan/helium like implementation.
>Don't put your wifi credentials into your TV
Amazon has a solution to this. If your tv is within wifi range of an amazon device, your TV will be able to connect to a network. It might even be your neighbors device.
Can't say I'm planning to buy a TV anytime soon but that's good advice, thank you.