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Comment by the_svd_doctor | Hacker News Reader

I tried to never connect my Smart TV to anything, but I realized one day (when someone's stuff was playing on it without me accepting any request...) it connected an open network in my residence. The only trick that worked to prevent it from connecting was putting the wrong password, and let it loop forever, trying to connect. Ugly.

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I have an extra SSID which has no internet access and logs all of the things for exactly this reason.

Pick up anything interesting off your IoT and smart devices

I would imagine. Otho g but a bunch of DNS queries? Maybe the occasional fall back hardcoded IP?

That's a very good idea! Thank you for sharing!

What's the simple setup for something like this?

Lots of consumer routers these days let you set parental controls. Disable access entirely, or put time limits on it, then remove all the allowed times.

Ubiqti makes it really simple

Basically create a new hidden ssid and make a new rout that goes nowhere

Then enter SSID and password into the tv

You can monitor that interface too

For bonus points, mirror the traffic off to a zeek to get even more than the ubiquiti DPI

I’ve been wanting to set up something like this, but I’m too lazy. It probably wouldn’t even take that long to set up.

I've heard about this before. Which manufacturer? Although I'm never buying a smart TV, it's interesting to maintain a mental blacklist of vendors.

I would also like to know this. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior and I would be fuming if my device pulled a stunt like that.

you can block any device by their mac on your router

Some TVs will connect to your neighbours' open wifi, so no, you can't, unfortunately.

No wonder why there are so many rogue IoT devices and botnets. This kind of behavior from the TV manufacturers needs to stop.

Stop making everything connected, or at least make it work properly without Internet access, and stop connecting devices at any cost.

an interesting take - it has been a while to see a non-password, no sign up network around.

But I can imagine it popular in apartment buildings. To be fair, if my TV connects to a network on its right own, I'd return it.

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