alt Hacker NewsI don't mean to be dismissive, but isn't this old news? Hasn't it been the case that _all_ "smart" TVs have been spying on users since they came out? I've personally operated as if they are: my TV is not connected to the internet. At least, not through my internet connection. It's not on my wifi, nor is it connected to my LAN.
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We knew they were reporting back our watching habits of the built-in stuff. Then we learned they were doing video capture on HDMI ports to report back on what we watched on external sources (Xbox, Apple TV, etc). Then we learned that they did botnet-like stuff in the background even when they were switched off.
NOW we're learning that they're spying with their internal microphone when switched off.
A real problem is that you might not even need to give these internet access. If your neighbor gives their TV internet access and it can establish a mesh connection then it might be able to exfiltrate data that way. I don't know of any TVs that do this, but it's always been a possibility.
Another possibility is even if you don't give it access to your wifi, if you eventually give your TV away or sell it, the new user could connect it to wifi and if it has any persistent storage then it could upload all of its stored data about you at that point.
Companies that do this need to end their entire brand, because they're just helping the CCP.
This is straight up dystopian level spying. Streaming microphone inputs all the time, knowing everything that is displayed on the screens via object recognition and stuff. Scraping your local network. If I’m not mistaken there is the possibility for the tv to connect to public/open networks to send this stuff without you knowing. Magically syncing with your phone. It’s truly terrible, and a class action is all but guaranteed to come. Gamers nexus has a great video on this.