Comment by pengaru
15 hours ago
If these things include WiFi hw it's not so simple.
You'd likely be surprised what proprietary WiFi-enabled consumer products do without your knowledge. Especially in a dense residential environment, there's nothing preventing a neighbor's WiFi AP giving internet access to everything it deems eligible within range. It may be a purely behind the scenes facility, on an otherwise ostensibly secured AP.
I see this claim posted a lot, and not a single person has ever provided evidence of it happening with any TV brand I've ever heard of.
I don't have firsthand knowledge of TVs doing this, but other consumer devices with WiFi most definitely do this. If you don't control the software driving the TV, and the TV has WiFi hardware, I would assume it's at the very least in the cards.
It's rationalized by the vendors as a service to the customer. The mobile app needs to be able to configure the device via the cloud, so increasing the ability for said device to reach cloud by whatever means necessary is a customer benefit.
I've never seen evidence of a mainstream consumer device doing this either. Got some examples I can look at?
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If you are paranoid about this, most TV wifi hardware is simple enough to physically disconnect.
You're suggesting that my TV would connect to a random open WiFi, it sounds far fetched
At some point it will potentially connect to people walking by on the street (Amazon Sidewalk). For now they haven't hooked Fire TVs into it.
Amazon Sidewalk is more about things connecting to the neighbor's always-plugged-in Echo Dot speaker than it is about them connecting to people walking down literal sidewalks.
As a thought exercise ask yourself would you notice if any of your closed WiFi-enabled hw scanned for APs and occasionally phoned home, if it didn't go out of its way to inform you of this? What would prevent the vendor from doing so?