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Comment by pfundstein | Hacker News Reader

Here's wondering if these ads can be blocked simply with a DNS based blocker like PiHole.

As far as I know, not everything can be blocked.

You were able to block everything in the past but no longer. Samsung catched on and now serves some ads over the same domains they distribute their firmware updates, install apps, get the program guide, and check the online status.

If you block those domains the Samsung TV loses most of its internet features and also seems to go crazy and requests all domains multiple times per second, defeating deep sleep of the TV.

I think it is possible to serve fake ads from Pi-hole.

very hard to do if they're expecting it over TLS1.2 and have hardcoded their own root CA into the TV.

Hard but doable. So far everything hardcoded of that sort has been successfully extracted (or leaked). I don't think they'll be adding expensive TPM chips.

Yes, until they'll add a data SIM to the TVs. Then what, some shielding on the case? And what if the TV won't boot unless online with its own server?

I think: monitor + DVB decoder + Raspberry PI.

If they add a data sim, I’m going to work out how to use it!

You will be disappointed to find out that SIMs that you get with IoT devices these days often only connect you to a private network without access to the wider Internet. At least if the point of the SIM was to just distribute firmware updates/download ads/talk to the cloud services of the vendor.

This is why I see that the push for 5G as some kind of magic everyone is (supposedly) asking for, to make their lives better, is a fraud.

It will be the end of privacy completely. EVERYTHING always on and serving ads, collecting telemetry and logging everything. There will be no way to shut them down.

My TV has been relieved of all internet connection privileges, and it's staying that way.

> There will be no way to shut them down.

Most people already don't care and happily connect everything to their Wi-Fi. Those that do care and now setup firewalls/piholes/etc. on their Wi-Fi will learn to snip the coax/desolder/drill out the 5G antenna in the future.

And what if the damn thing won't boot without 5G antenna working (I mean "phoning home" test via 5G antenna on every reboot)?

Yes, this works actually. I recently bought a Samsung Frame and was very annoyed by the ads in the interface. I now have a Raspberry Pi running PiHole and it removed almost all ads. Sometimes I still see an ad, then I know it's time to update the block-list of my PiHole. When looking at PiHole's logs, it's unbelievable how many requests the TV sends to Samsung servers. These are blocked now luckily, but this TV (and I suspect other Samsung TVs as well) is a real nightmare with regard to privacy. It's the first time I actually read all the privacy statements on the TV. The remote has a microphone (for an 'assistant' called Bixby[1]) that I absolutely do not want turned on, but it's very unclear how to disable it. I wish I could buy a dumb TV.

[1] https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/tv-audio-video/how-do-i-u...

Yes it can work but its a cat and mouse game. Not to mention, prevention is better than cure, this is indeed a cancer.

Roku’s ads (and intensive logging) can be blocked this way. I’d expect it to work that same for Samsung TVs

How much does Roku log?

It’s TLS so I don’t know what it’s attempting to log but the highest blocked device in my house is the roku. I even have a Samsung TV (which I’ve never seen an ad on btw but I set it to boot directly to the HDMI port with the roku)

Is there any degraded functionality on the Roku if you block the logging?

Only thing I’ve noticed is the Home Screen ad location is a big grey box as opposed to an ad. I only use it for Plex and PBS Kids. Both apps work perfectly.

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