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Just don't connect your TV to wifi? That's what I did when I finally had to get one when I was replacing the ancient energy hungry plasma I'd been using. I already have other devices for watching Netflix/YouTube/ChromeCast.

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That isn’t going to work for long, your neighbor’s Alexa is now automatically sharing his internet with you, it’s just a matter of your TV manufacturer striking a deal with amazon for access to their mesh network.

Thanks, I really hate this.

But seriously, what can we do here? How to I inform people like my parents of this kind of thing without being an alarmist? Should I even care?

The damages are largely theoretical at this point. Most of the time the compromised devices just join a botnet and don't directly steal much from the owners because they don't have access to much. For the privacy concerns it's also largely theoretical at the moment because to our knowledge (at least mine) the government hasn't used SmertTVs to do spying (yet).

Also make sure there are no open access points anywhere nearby. Some models automatically connect to them.

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