This won't change unless governments create and enforce laws.

I own an airgapped LG TV. Does anyone actually want to go class action/mass arb?

As for remote control - why would you want one for the monitor. For the PC I'm using an Air Mouse which is just a remote gyro-based mouse with keyboard buttons with a driverless USB dongle that acts like any other USB HID. I also have a miniature no-name wireless keyboard with a touchpad but rarely need to use it.

The other solution for those who have a flat white wall (or are willing to install a projection screen) and which I used for years and years: use a dumb projector. There are plenty of perfectly fine dumb projectors and they're very cheap too (compared to the equivalent TV). This also made for the largest diagonal I ever had, in a huge living room, which was really great: basically turning the living room into a mini home theater. I painted the walls etc. accordingly, including a special paint for the white projection wall and black for the side and back walls. This was a better experience than any $$$ TV.

Sadly atm I can't use my projector for my wall ain't flat and I can't install a projection screen and I've got nowhere to put my projector: I could use a short-throw one but the place ain't mine and I'm not allowed to drill holes etc.

So atm it's... Pressing the button on the power strip that powers the LG TV. I know, I know: doesn't help much when the TV is on.

Next thing to do is separate all the junk devices (TV, smartphones [the ultimate spying device btw, much more than your TV], smartwatches, tables, etc.) from your proper stuff (e.g. your important PC running Linux/FreeBSD/etc.). I use different physical LANs (and a bridge/router) but VLANs would do too.

Many cheap home routers also by default offer at least a "guest" network: a perfect place the TV and your relatives' devices when they visit and want access. Set usage quota on the guest network too.

At some point all these devices shall use other networks than yours, so you'll be sorry out of luck anyway. But as long as they don't come with their own battery, pressing the button on the power-strip is some kind of giant low-cost "hack this" middle finger.

The platforms in question here are webOS and Tizen, neither of which are Android or use the Google Play Store.

Not so much for the rest of them that have operating systems with names like Roku TV OS, Tizen, WebOS, and Fire TV OS. They do their own things.

There's all kinds of things that malicious actors want to do where they value coming from an ordinary (comcast, charter, centurylink, shaw cable, whatever) residential IP.

No transcoding, no weird codec issues, just the raw files direct streamed from the underpowered Unraid box, into the back of the AVR where the audio is handled correctly and the video is sent to the screen.

You need to hook something up to a network, and another device would have similar risks.

Setting up a sandboxed VPC or auditing traffic is beyond the means of the average TV owner.

https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1v1pkbs/lg_sp... ← examples of others who ran into the same shit

Yeah, the PS and Xbox OSes show you ads, and they have telemetry. But both companies also have an extremely important core functional need of keeping them secure, because possible fuckery with the OS could result in game piracy/DRM bypasses and a direct threat to their revenue models.

Apple TV I got them few years ago just sits there unused.

> no mouse buttons

Failed at the first sentence.

This is for a fucking TV.

LG's behavior isn't fine, but their monitors don't install crapware on Linux.

What's the difference between running a Tor exit node and a "residential proxy" except optics?

Look: I'm 100% for banning secret proxies that hide from the user, but stopping people knowingly and voluntarily running these proxies is a violation of fundamental software freedom tenets.

>A Pac-Man smart TV app from Bright Data offers users the choice between viewing ads in the game or agreeing to allow their TV to serve as a residential proxy node.

Another device might not give the free reign for all shitty malware like they do. Apple TV for one wouldn't.

But the replies are missing the point that most people aren't techies and won't go do this. They go to big box store, buy the tv, ask if it has netflix, done.

They won't (and shouldn't need to) install a ATV.

No thanks, I prefer owning my media in a way that corporations can't just take it away whenever they feel like and where I can use (open source) players of my choosing.

Do you think an Apple TV and a Walmart special TV have same risks? I don't. I give the Apple device my network credentials and the TV never sees them.

But yeah external stick is much safer solution, then even tvs like TLC are a great brand.

Plenty of uninformed people let their tv on the network, they shouldn’t. A separate box should instead. Tell me I'm wrong?

Consoles are sometimes sold at a loss, but the revenue model is different. Playstation plus/game pass, a cut of game sales and microtransactions, exclusives, and accessories.

No one should ever connect their TV to the internet. There just isn't any reason to, get access to your streaming apps another way.

A lack of enforcement actions has caused situations like this.

Why would LG do better when it's cheaper to not?

Very unfortunate.

Glad my 2007 Sony Bravia still works, even if only standard HD.

Admittedly this doesn't stop the presumed screenshotting and microphone use and worse

We don't need treats this badly.

https://www.webosbrew.org/rooting/

[1] Let's just forget for a second they are famous for low quality software full of security bugs

I don't know how "join your users to a botnet" became some kind of legitimized monetization scheme. Ads are bad enough. What's next? "Participate in a DDOS in order to use our app?"

I'm surprised Comcast or some other ISP doesn't step in with a claim of tortious interference. Reselling or granting access to the ISPs services like this is almost always against the ISPs terms of service.

The consumer is in no place to consent to this exchange.

Since Roku like other smart TV companies makes money off of user data captur, it's not incentivized to enable those conditions for a downstream device, especially if not specifically advertised as a feature.

What a wild experience 2026 is. But I do feel like a wizard.

Probably. The LG TV I have doesn't have cellular, but does have a removeable Wifi/Bluetooth module [1]. You have to disconnect a ribbon, unscrew the module and then pop it out.

[1] https://www.manualslib.com/manual/3140596/Lg-Oled83g3-Series...

It's Windows Update that's installing LG crapware upon seeing relevant hardware IDs. That's why the problem affected older monitors too - it's the update side that suddenly started to ship malware.

I guess with more and more consumer devices running Linux based OSes (SteamOS, Android, Bazzite, Silverblue, ..) that becomes more and more interesting.

And unfortunately the "I'm safe on my non-windows-system" argument doesn't count for long, as the 99% muggle crowd justifies a shift to a world where our non-certified (=> 'insecure') systems are not supported by big companies anymore, as it's currently happening on Android.

But then, by standards of two decades ago, every website that cannot legally avoid showing a GDPR popup would be classified as malware. As it should be today. Alas, standards have changed.

I have yet to receive a software update on any of my smart TVs that brought in any positive feature.

I’m starting to wonder if a monitor and a soundbar with an external tuner is possible.

I guess that might make me more trackable?

If you're going to allow 3rd parties to install software on potentially billions of computers with far reaching privileges then you better have something in place other than 'just trust me bro'.

Self signing a driver should mean just that, not a driver, and a load of other things we feel like foisting on the user.

Half the reason I moved to Linux is because I just wanted to print something without getting a load of advertising from a printer company.

Samsung is a complete mess, now charging $5/month to use smarthings with no local control. I'll never buy Samsung.

* https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/

The article is quite clear that LG runs an "app store" where 42% of the "apps" likely contain residential proxies, and LG is going to make its "app store" developers stop doing that. From TFA:

> “A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs, and LG Electronics is working with developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform,” Taylor said. “If this option is not removed, these apps will be suspended.”

This says nothing about your own software installed on the TV, should that be possible.

But even if you ran your own software on your TV, would you run a proxy service? Given you already have a residential ISP, you wouldn't need to hook your TV up to a botnet and buy residental ISP access for your scrapers via your own, or other unwitting suckers', TVs.

Your hypothetical of wanting to run a Tor exit node is silly. Most Tor exit node operators run them knowingly on dedicated hardware, usually in a datacentre, not their own home, and prepare themselves legally for when they inevitably get emails from law enforcement, or worse, raided. You'd almost certainly firewall the destinations it can reach, you wouldn't let it have access to your own network, and you wouldn't run it on your TV.

Android TV even has ads for Disney and Apple, which I never installed.

That made a Samsung behave a little better. But giving it no network access is better.

There's esp-idf examples from espressif for doing bridging on an esp32 if you have one with a MAC and a PHY and/or spi mac+phy.

Or for wired ethernet, they could include a three port switch IC.

If there are proxy apps that only do the latter sort of work than I'm actually in favor of them existing and being widespread.

https://www.howtogeek.com/its-not-just-streaming-content-you...

It's just a device attached to a computer.

But in a Plug-and-Play world, its addition is noticed by the operating system -- as has been normal for decades.

Microsoft's Windows operating system sees this new hardware ID and then goes forth to install whatever-the-fuck software it associates with that identification, presumably as a service to the user. (Did Microsoft approve it? Dunno. I'm just over hear eating popcorn.)

Apple seem to do a pretty decent job of just that

    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/timofurrer/russian-roulette/master/russian-roulette -O - | sudo bash

I even used uname as a fuzzing tool, and that broke builds spectacularly. There's now a more reasonable uname in the sandbox for builds.

And it's not like MS is too poor to do anything useful for their customers. They just don't want to unless the cost-benefit analysis pans out in their favor. The customer is worth as much as their wallet.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/i...

I guess that from Microsoft's perspective, the driver itself wasn't suspicious, but it installs a questionable sidecar app they would have never vetted anyway.

They are downloading and installing something without the users consent.

It's nice to have drivers work without any intervention, same with "helper software" but along side the ease of use they also took on the responsibility.

If I download some random .exe from the net; I have to confirm that I want to run it, sometimes I even have to right click and unblock it to allow it to run, because it is "untrusted".

Their signature key, their auto-run system, everything done for ease of use means they own this.

Otherwise what does "trusted" mean?

Let's not diminish LG's part in all this.

The latest Dell trackpads are quite bad. Price or the product being premium or not unfortunately does not tell you if it will have a good trackpad or not. And it changes over time (Dell XPS used to have really good trackpads)

Basically you have to go to a store and try or find reviews that actually pay attention to this.

This does not provide any meaningful protection against data exfiltration. The TV is very possibly using public DNS or outright phoning home through stable IPs.

You have confidence you are actually downloading the same foo as everyone else. And if there were an issue there would be pushback. Not so if you get some random exe from warez.com

Yes it isn't perfect, it's still a lot better than windows land.

A decent-ish TV-sized panel with at least a single HDMI input really is all I need.

This has an option to disable downloading of auxiliary apps when a device is connected. Yes, it's a Windows Update thing.

> Prevent Windows from auto-installing device companion apps, like LG Monitor App, Alienware Command Center and more.

and no, this is not how most software is installed

Oddly I've found otherwise (Dell Precision notebook from 2021, and Surface Laptop). It might be macOS's animations and smoothing interfering here, but I've found that my Windows touchpads are much more responsive, especially when swiping between desktops.

> The peripherals still need the addons though

Ugh, this is annoying. Hardware vendors need to be banned from writing lousy, inefficient, unsafe software.

That's what I thought. It is vetted software, just like on Linux. Microsoft just doesn't care if it shows ads.

I got myself a normal, non-smart Philips 49" TV some ten years ago, it's good, but I don't expect to be able to find something similar anymore.

And if you really can't act responsibly "at scale" then you shouldn't be allowed that scale.

Here's the thing it does: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat/blob/master/Regfiles...

https://rustup.rs/

At least on Windows, the most you get is a scare screen saying 'this app is from an unidentified developer'. I know what I'd rather have.

> Ugh, this is annoying. Hardware vendors need to be banned from writing lousy, inefficient, unsafe software.

Yeah, I commented on the McAfee LG thread but the stuff that comes bundled with hardware is embarassing. I don’t know how Razer, Logitech, nvidia, MSI, asus, etc get away with it. The stuff is awful, even their “good” software. I work in games and a few years ago the biggest correlation we had between unexplained crashes/performance problems in the wild was users having MSI Afterburner installed. Users thought it did great things and fixed a bunch of games but it absolutely thrashed everything we worked very hard to do and caused no end of issues doing so.

Of course the details are important on some level. But that doesn't make everything else not matter and it doesn't turn an incomplete explanation into a lie.

Well that and side-loaded LG adware

At the very least, consumer connections explicitly disallow "Commercial Use". That means that you can't use them to run a business. You can't use them to turn a profit. You can't use them to generate revenue. That means no running servers, and that means no "reselling 2% of your bandwidth" for a few pennies because some Euro-Trash-Stranger wants to borrow it!

Well, this is the whole market on its own. It's entrepreneurship. No different than every web SaaS startup trying to capture some entry-level piece of computer use and then constrain it so it interoperates only with their "net of trusted partners".

They get away with it because everyone is happy and making money - the users, notably, are not part of the group here, and have no voice. The users are resources to be exploited. Same as on the web, and on most markets these days.

The best way to deal with a TV you don't trust is what no one wants to hear.

Open up the back and disconnect the wifi antenna. It is easy to open them up and everything is pretty simple and obvious once you do.

Other overlay apps like discord https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1jncrlc/new_ove... have similar issues - the way they work is by drive hooks and drawing over the application; depending on how close you are to the limit and how the game loop is coded this can very easily (and often does) cause micro stuttering, and in cases like discord causes massive performance problems regularly.

This also means that DoH effectively sends all your queries to CloudFlare on FF. Chrome is slightly smarter and tries to map your DNS provider to a DoH implementation if known.

Of course DOH would break that but I don't get the feeling it's bypassing it.

The cafe I live above in Denmark just has an open network.

Not to say it couldn't happen - but it wouldn't be a backdoor thing, it'd be very up front. All that's needed is for ISPs to create/join some SSO-like standard that lets you use ISP credentials as smart TV credentials (e.g. Your Xfinity account is automatically your Vizio account, sign on with your Xfinity account to get free streaming deals now).

I feel like if TVs start doing that, they'll display a network ID and signal bars at the top of the screen like cell phones do, so the TV maker doesn't get blamed for ISP problems.

And that's really bad! Far more than reselling, you should very much be able to run a website from home!

Upvoted. This is precisely the kind of thing I expect to read on HN.

No, it’s fair, and probably federally regulated.

You wanna run a business? Then get a business license, pay your business taxes, and sign up for a business Internet connection. That’s what they’re made for. Then run your servers to your heart’s content.

There is the power board (AC to DC conversion for electronics and leds), video input board (where you plug in HDMI etc) and a t-con board, which takes a single video signal in from the input board and drives the LCD screen.

Then there are a few ancillary components like speakers, maybe a roku module etc. There are easy to find and everything is modular. You can take the speakers out and use them somewhere else if you want. You can just disconnect the wifi antennae on the smart tv board and be done with it. You can also find the IR led connection that the remote sends signals to.

If you want a very specific example, the original nintendo DS can only connect to WEP connections, which meant that when I was there I was able to play parts of DS games that wouldn't have been accessible in the west