Hacker News Reader

Comment by LegitShady | Hacker News Reader

currently ad free, you mean. I bought my mom a TV that didn't have ads and a year later it had ads and its own wifi network I couldn't disable.

You 'own' the device but you can't control it. It's 'smart' and you're dumb, because you controlling it isn't the goal.

View on HN

How can someone on HN be unable to "disable" a TV's WiFi network ? Can't you just ban its MAC address from the router or something ?

Its _own_ wifi network, likely a Chromecast network like “Vizio $MODEL.c”

It has its own wifi network it broadcasts - an internal wifi router that makes its own network. There's no option to disable it. You can stop it from connecting to your devices, but you can't stop it from broadcasting. You don't know what information it's collecting as your devices constantly query what wifi networks are around them. Even if the tv has no internet connection it still broadcasts a wifi network.

I imagine the same way google improved their location services by driving around and literally collecting wifi network information, vizio can see where any TV not connected to the internet physically is if they send someone to drive around and look for their own TVs wifi networks.

I still don’t understand. If you never ever connect your creepy TV to the Internet and never give it permission to say connect to your phone, how could it pass on all that collected data?

I have always used “Smart TV” this way and have been at peace thinking I don’t have a problem. Am I missing something here? A Vizio TV can create its own WiFi Network all it wants, but it ain’t connecting to my home Internet. Why Do I have to worry?

Your TV connects with your neighbors tv that has internet, now your tv effectively has internet. Maybe you dismiss this risk because you live in a rural area, but meanwhile the manufacturer of your router (or any device you’ve validly given internet access to) inks a deal with the manufacturer of your tv.

Amazon Sidewalk, public nets such as Spectrum Wifi, maybe even cellular like cars come with. There are so many ways a smart TV could surreptitiously pull a fast one, and those ways are increasing. Maybe even mesh networks consisting of other TVs. Yours might not be connected to your wifi, but maybe your neighbor’s has permission to theirs.

If I have to worry about WiFi war driving, I would have to worry about a lot of things at my home. I agree it’s a concern and I choose to deal with it last.

Mesh with neighbour’s TV network which has access to their internet is more plausible to me and concerning. Wouldn’t this be illegal and a waiting class action law suit? (Using Neighbor’s internet surreptitiously?) and an easy one to spot at that?

you don't have to "worry" about wifi war driving per se - you just have to know that google already does it and likely sells that information to other companies. No need to worry except to know its likely already occurring.

And in terms of legality - you likely give them permission to do whatever they want in the terms and services you agree to on first boot, or install an app on your phone, etc. And you have no control of the TV's wifi - unless you hack the encryption or get direct access to the firmware you might never be able to tell whats going on. That's definitely beyond my capabilities.

How would you spot that one? It would appear to them to be traffic coming from their TV, and you wouldn't see anything on your own net. Unless that's similar to how hotspotting works, where the TTL is different.

Also, isn't wifi sharing how many products work these days, such as various find my phone features and Amazon devices?

A simple Wifi scanner would give you a list of wifi signals around you. So, if a TV is surreptitiously creating a wifi hot spot, it would be on that list and someone would have spotted it by now... I have some digging to do this weekend.

WiFi host networks are frequently queried by all nearby devices to see what access points are available. Collecting device IDs that are scanning is useful information since for a long time and on most devices, the MAC address was not rotated so it acted to identify people and where they go with mobile devices.

All it takes is someone that downloads an app, then the app connects to the TV and sends the data via the smart-phone internet connection. Could be your neighbor or anyone in range. Better get a soldering pen and remove the antenna.

They probably mesh them to neighbours to spy on people that does not setup wifi.

Aha I get it. If it's not connected to any network, there's not much harm in it collecting some data. But I see it'll be a problem for the common people.

I’d like to know how it’s implemented and see if it can be physically disabled, removed or purposefully sabotaged.

Maybe he means it came with a sim card.

Don't connect it to the network, ever, and it can't update.

You took actions that initiated the auto update mechanism (plugging in ethernet, typing in with password) that were the root cause of the issue you experienced.

A device you have already purchased acquiring new “features” is entirely the responsibility of the manufacturer. We’re going to need regulation on this behavior, it’s not solvable through technology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com