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Comment by tinus_hn | Hacker News Reader

Some of these TVs automatically connect to any open wireless network in the area, so that isn’t always an option

I mean I always saw this as something theoretical TV manufacturers could do but I've never seen such a TV in the wild. Can you give an example?

I haven't seen an open wireless network for years around my residence. Is open Wifi still a thing?

It can very well connect to those semi-public WiFi's that require payment or require to be a customer of that ISP (and every router from that ISP automatically broadcasts such a network in addition to the private one).

This isn't something I've seen in the wild yet (beyond anecdotal evidence which I suspect is due to a misconfiguration), however it is a very valid concern especially considering most ISPs are in bed with the media/advertising industry and would directly benefit from allowing these TVs to connect to these networks and making a deal with the manufacturer to make them do so.

That would have to either be done via the ISP gateway recognizing a MAC address or other stuff that is sniffable and potentially crackable (remember this is Samsung software we're talking about) by someone. I would assume by now if anything like that existed it'd be exploited to hell and back for a free Internet connection.

Yes, especially in more densely populated places. I can pick up a few open networks from where I’m sitting in a moderately-populated American suburb.

If it's obvious where it is you might be able to do some percussive maintenance on the antenna

I've seen this mentioned in a few threads on HN and I'm curious.

Which TVs do this?

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