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Comment by nvme0n1p1 | Hacker News Reader

- Buy any TV you want

- Don't connect it to the network

Doesn't work, all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.

This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?

probably, but I'll let gp answer. But I want guarantees that they don't do that, until them I'll consider the fact that if they can and it's profitable they will do it

If you want a guarantee, that's a conservative threat model and a fair position. What's not fair is GP saying "doesn't work, all the TVs do XYZ", when not a single TV in the real world has ever actually done XYZ.

Ultimately I'll need to find data to settle how paranoid I might be. I'm still leaning on not enough. But isn't it also not fair to claim not a single tv has done it? Proving an universal is not easy for gp but the inverse of forall is not a not exists. And I know the world of middle management profit optimization.

I indeed cannot prove it. I also can't universally prove that wombats don't have telekinesis. But the preponderance of the evidence points to neither being true.

I know there are lots of advocacy groups and youtube channels that are testing TV models and would LOVE to be the first to break this story and publicly shame Samsung or whoever. But it simply hasn't happened.

Amazon Sidewalk is a real life product that offers this over bluetooth

Just because something exists as a product, doesn't mean it exists inside your TV.

With TV makers having recently destroyed trust and there not being a good way for consumers to force trust it makes little difference whether they are doing it or not.

If you can't tell whether your disconnected TV is spying on you but you know that you cannot trust it, it's better to treat it as compromised.

Agree that it should be observed before assumed. Would a software-defined radio and a packet capturing mechanism be sufficient?

Some do this (Samsung), but the more common tactic is to throw constant nags up if the telemetry is not being sent to the manufacturer.

I did my research and bought one that does not do this (2025 TCL), but, if it turned out that it did, I'd have shamelessly returned it. I'd also have issued a chargeback if the store gave me any crap.

Even with all that, if you install firmware updates over the network, then disconnect WiFi, the TV becomes unusable until you factory reset it. (I did this because its EDID is corrupted, and I have to override it with a linux cmdline. The update did not help.)

Some TVs will refuse to work if you don't create an account and connect them to internet. They won't usually advertise this. You may have to repeatedly return those TVs as defective as you find them.

Better hope that no guest connects the TV to their phone hotspot to watch their Netflix like one user in a previous post reported happened to them.

Until we learn they Bluetooth beacon and do mesh to find some Internet connected LG fridge.

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