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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

Never add your WiFi credentials you your TV. It doesn’t let you remove them so you’re only option is to create a “dummy” network (ex: phone as a hotspot) and switch to it.

Also, watch out for clueless^helpful friends and relatives who try to “fix” your TV’s WiFi.

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This is why you segment out your WiFi, I have 4 SSID's

1. Normal Traffic

2. Guest

3. Security Devices (Camera's, and other Home Automation)

4. Media Devices (Roku, FireTV, Smart TV's, etc)

media devices only have access to my home Plex server and the internet nothing else

I just have a GLiNet travel router I picked up for $20 that is open and not connected to anything. Any "smart" devices get connected to that so they can talk to each other but not the internet.

Yeah, VLANs work for a TV that is only trying to connect to your network, but doesn't deal with the case of a TV that will connect to any open SSID (a case that at least one other commenter in this thread claims is already occurring). It wouldn't be difficult to have the TV check different open networks if it's not able to reach a server due to a firewall config on the home network. For anyone living in a relatively dense city, this could be a problem.

IIUC, you're saying there's no obvious way to make the TV stop using the Wifi network once you tell it the SSID + password.

Couldn't you just change the wifi password?

It will continue trying to connect to your SSID. Failing of course, but it will still pollute your channel with garbage packets.

I really wish I could just remove the wifi chip. I'm tempted to take the rear panel off just to see if it's reasonably accessible.

Or just snip the antenna

<fantasy> Or just keep hitting company officers with a tire iron until they fix it. </fantasy>

Put it in a faraday cage.

(ot: should that be clueless^Whelpful, or is there some new convention I'm not aware of? ^ still means "ctrl" right?)

The parent is using it to mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction

If true, that would be logical and fair.

It’s not. I’m not that clever.

Not quite, as i doubt exclusive or is meant here.

^ probably means super-script format in this context.

I'd probably say ~helpful~clueless instead though

It's an old Unix convention: ^W (Ctrl-w) would remove a word using the Emacs keybindings. So in place of striking out a word, you'd put ^W and the replacement, as you would when typing it out ("clueless...err, no, wait...ctrl-W...HELPFUL").

Gp missed "w".

I had this problem with a Vizio 40" 4K TV once, and was able to solve it using the factory reset function in the menu.

> It doesn’t let you remove them

What about factory reset?

My wife connected it to our wifi the other day ... I almost lost it.

A factory reset should fix that TV right up.

Also be aware that some smart TV's have been found to just connect to any open wifi, so even if you don't enter one and think your tv isn't spying, you could be wrong.

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