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Comment by doctor_eval | Hacker News Reader

I never plug TVs into the internet and generally don’t connect any device unless it has a clear need to connect.

In the office I’ve taken to calling connected TVs a security concern, but I didn’t realise how right I was. The conference room TVs there are currently connected (before my time) but I’ll be disconnecting them next week.

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My TCL TV power-cycles endlessly unless it has an internet connection. This behavior didn't start until a year after I purchased it.

I can't help but wonder if it's intentional. It did get me to connect the damn thing, despite my severe misgivings.

So the tactic worked.

I locked down my Alexa, and noticed it takes 2-3 “Alexa”s to get it to start listening. I know not having the “learn your voice” thing off lowers accuracy, but it seems really odd it doesn’t wake up instantly. I would assume that is what they train the ML stuff most for.

Has anyone else noticed the same thing?

If you run pihole and have a good router, doing an “if port 53 and not from PiHole, block” fixes a lot of these dirty devices.

Wait till they all start DoH-ing..

Some vendors (Samsung) 'smart' TVs will attempt to utilize nearby open wifi networks [1]

Would not be surprising to see Comcast/TW/Charter/$ISP would strike a deal with TV vendors to provide a wifi network on the ISP-provided routers just for the TVs or other 'smart' devices [2]

Start watching out for cellular connectivity in TVs as yet-another-phone-home-vector too [3]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/security/comments/bpjky4/worried_ab...

[2] https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/about-xfinity-wifi-...

[3] https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/01/huawei-reportedly-plans-f...

Ditto. Have a couple Roku TV's that have never and will never been connected to the network or internet.

I didn't buy them for that functionality, but was hoping that someone would figure out how to root them - AFAIK though that still hasn't happened.

I don't connect our TV to the internet for this reason, but I'm wonder if the PS4 I watch everything on does this. I hadn't heard it called out, but I wouldn't be surprised if tracking shows up at some point.

Sony definitely phones home to sends digital fingerprints of media you stream from local servers. I was streaming a movie on my PS3 from a local file server and about 5-15 minutes into the movie the audio cut out and a banner popped up about not having a proper license for the media

Was the movie you streamed Cinavia [1] copy-protected?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia

My Apple TV sometimes doesn't negotiate hdmi correctly and ends up without hdcp enabled, and it whines similarly to what you describe. If I switch inputs on the receiver it'll re-negotiate correctly and everything works again. It's annoying, but it's not necessarily caring specifically about the content you are watching.

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