But it's never connected to the internet, not even for software updates. If the TV isn't connected to the internet there's no reason to update it, assuming the TV works as expected.
It's a trade off I guess. I use Home Assistant to control TVs, so kinda need the access.
Have you noticed that on many home routers there is now a default open, sometimes password protective network named AT&T or Cox Wi-Fi? That’s the backhaul. The TV will join that automatically without asking you because they have an agreement with the network provider. This is how tons of devices phone home now. You don’t ever need to add a device on your network for it to have internet. If there’s a partner Wi-Fi network anywhere, it’ll push through that.
They tried that in Denmark a decade ago (or more). Enabled a "public wifi" on all home routers to provide wifi coverage for that company's customers everywhere.
They gave every assurance that it would be secure, completely separate from the users own network, and the bandwidth consumed would be added on top of whatever the user had a contract for.
It took a couple of days after launch before somebody managed to gain access to someone's private network from the public network and they shut it down again and never opened it again.
Anyway, I may be spoiled from living in Denmark, but I'm using my own router, which is an option when ordering, so I'm fairly certain nobody is sharing additional wifi hotspots.
And it's not just me. The majority of people I know use some kind of 3rd party router with their ISP. Granted, some of them just use whatever the ISP sends them, but even then I haven't ever seen any additional wifi networks, and the ISP prints the router admin password on the box itself, so you can poke around if you like (though the ISP has a backdoor, which is also why 3rd party routers are a thing).
The TV will join that automatically without asking you because they have an agreement with the network provider.
This seems far fetched to me. Have you seen evidence or reliable reporting of this?
Why is this more far fetched than LG smart TVs recording audio while pretending to be off and caching the results waiting for an opportunity to exfiltrate the precious data? We're in a "if they can they will" world with this stuff.
Comcast sets up a secondary wifi network on their routers in your home that they use as the backhaul for smartphones. Why wouldn't they make a deal with LG or whoever to use that data? We've already established they'll do about a half-a-Stuxnet to get at this data, you're telling me they won't do a couple bulk deals with common ISPs?
Why go through all that trouble of spoofing MAC addresses or assuming it will always be able to connect to an open WiFi network.
5G connectivity is cheap. You can put a 5G modem in pretty much any device for $10 or less, and pay roughly $2/year in subscription fees. My local water utility with ~900 subscribers pays $2/year for 5G connectivity for water meters, and I have no doubt you can get it much cheaper at scale.
They don't even have to tell you about the 5G modem. It could exclusively be used for exfiltrating data about your viewing habits. It's virtually undetectable and more or less impossible to block. The TV could behave nice on the Wifi, you can block all the DNS servers you like, it would still be able to phone home.
because using open wifi is infinity cheaper.
You are asking for $20 increase in BOM, which means they somehow has to extract $20 from your private data, which is hard.
Or simply increase the selling price by $20, would you even notice ?
And if they're not expecting to make $20 over 10 years selling your data, it hardly seems worth risking your reputation over.
It’s just the BOM price. When your product has Cellular module, there is set of certification that is painful to pass. It’s better to use included wifi module since it’s already there and certified
Okay, even if you don’t agree with me that it’s far fetched, claims of ‘X is doing Y’ usually require some evidence that X is doing Y to be considered credible.
after everything we’ve seen factually that companies do, why would this, of all things, seem far-fetched to you?
i think it would be significantly more far-fetched that cable companies don’t sell them access. i would be shocked if they didn’t.
How about this? LG builds many other home appliances like washers and driers. Some have apps and wifi.
Why wouldn’t LG allow their devices to talk to each other locally, without needing to join a network? With private SSID or something like that? Only one appliance would need internet access.
This shit already exists. Like Amazon Sidewalk: https://ring.com/amazon-sidewalk
Now, I’m not saying LG is doing it, but this is not a far fetched technical concept. The only reason they’re potentially not going that far is because most people probably just connect it to the internet so why bother about the few who don’t.
The devices are already scanning the network for any devices and software they can find, and mapping your phone to your TV viewing habits for example. The LG execs are on record bragging about it. So I don’t see why it’s absurd
This is alarmingly realistic to me.
The part about ISP routers broadcasting an alternate "hotspot" SSID is documented [1] and can be easily observed. Walk around any city, open your phone's wifi settings and see networks like "xfinitywifi" or "optimumwifi". As an end user, if you connect to one of these networks from your device, you'll get a captive portal web page that makes you sign in to your ISP account. Once signed in, you get internet access courtesy of the router sitting in whatever home or business you happen to be near to.
In addition to ISPs allowing their own subscribers access, there are examples of corporations cutting deals with ISPs for hotspot network access. For example, Google's MVNO Google Fi has a deal with unnamed partners that allows subscribers' phones to connect to hotspot wifi networks for extra coverage, branded "Wi-Fi Auto Connect+" [2].
From the user's perspective (and personal experience), this connection is handled seamlessly and outside of the OS' normal wifi UI flow. If your phone sees no saved wifi networks but does see xfinitywifi (et al), it auto-connects in the background. Authentication with the captive portal happens automatically and non-interactively, presumably with some keys provisioned to your device. Your traffic is VPNed back to Google, so the router and ISP don't see anything. The only indication that any of this happened is that the "5G" icon changes to "W+"; the normal WiFi icon never shows up.
In the case of Google Fi, this is actually a pretty great deal for users. You get better coverage (especially indoors in cities, where cell service can be spotty) with no real downsides to you – your traffic isn't meaningfully exposed to another third party, it doesn't cost you extra, and you don't have to bother the staff for a wifi password.
But given all that, it's not a huge leap to believe that ISPs are also more than willing to quietly take LG's money in exchange for an all-access pass to their hotspot network.
It's easy to imagine that an evil company could ship their TV with a key that allows it on an ISP's hotspot network. No extra suspicious hardware like a 5G modem needed, and no MAC address spoofing required. The TV software could easily connect to the hotspot network with zero indication in the UI, and then use the surreptitious connection only to transmit your kompromat back to HQ.
If done intelligently, you'd never notice. By only transmitting spy reports (and not downloading new ads), even a keen observer wouldn't notice any behavior on the TV that would trigger "how tf did this thing get a network connection?" Even more insidious, you couldn't really see what traffic was happening, since IP packet captures on your network are useless in this scenario. You'd need special hardware to capture what the TV is actually doing on the air.
If truly evil, the software could do this hotspot dance even if you've configured your own WiFi network on the TV. If the software finds it can't reach ad HQ because you've firewalled it off, then despite your best efforts to contain the disease, it still can spy effectively thanks to your neighbor's router with its default-enabled ISP hotspot. Just do a daily upload while you're sleeping and otherwise sit innocuously on your locked-down VLAN.
Everyone evil wins: ISP collects that sweet bonus revenue at zero marginal cost, TV manufacturer doesn't have to foot the hardware bill for millions of 5G modems or (relatively) expensive cellular agreements, and advertisers get to be that much more creepy targeting you. I'm sure the wanna-be despots of the world don't mind the spy apparatus being built for them either, conveniently under the control of easily-compelled corporations.
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Now to be clear, I have no proof that any TV manufacturer is surreptitiously connecting to an ISP's hotspot network in order to exfiltrate your data. But all of the building blocks to make that happen provably do exist, and I seriously doubt that capitalism will allow them to go unused.
It's anything but far-fetched.
[1] eg https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/xfinity-wifi-hotspo... and https://www.spectrum.net/support/internet/spectrum-mobile-wi... and https://www.optimum.net/pages/internet/hotspots/faq.html
[2] https://fi.google.com/about/wi-fi-auto-connect-plus and https://support.google.com/fi/answer/10091529?hl=en
Joining that network from a new device always presents a captive portal that requires the credentials of my ISP account, so how does that work for you?
Where is a web link indicating partnerships, and compatible hardware lists? My ISP does not sell any TV sets.
which home router?
Again, what I mean is, even if you're able to block all these things, the company LG is still secretly and actively trying to collect and process user data, without user awareness or consent.
Actually what I wanted from the video was impact of user consent, but it doesn't seme to cover this: what happens if you accept nothing, or the minimal set of consent (so not including audio) of licenses to allow you to run third-party apps? I recall there are four checkboxes to check.
My guess is: not much.
What if you sell the TV? Can you clear the data with a factory reset so it's not just uploaded when a new user connects it?
LG has a cereal port on most of their televisions and monitors. There are quirks and bugs in some models but the general packet structure is simple and it's pretty straightforward to get an ESP32 with ESP home talking to the monitor.