Blocking the MAC address from making connections outright seems like a more sensible way to prevent surveillance.
Assuming of course you are using it as a truly 'dumb' TV and not as a client for Netflix etc.
Assuming of course you are using it as a truly 'dumb' TV and not as a client for Netflix etc.
They can't, but I do have this saved
https://web.archive.org/web/20191224122714/https://www.reddi...
Imagine my neighbor has unsecured WiFi network set for himself, I'm pretty sure he could call police on anyone connected to his network abusing his connection just because it's not locked.
By this logic you can steal unlocked car with key in engine or unlocked bike and that's what these TV would be doing.
You would be probably excused if TV done by itself, but it would land the brand lot of negative publicity and you could try to reimburse defense lawyer expenses on them. They would probably argue you agreed with terms of service when first launching TV, so don't do that if you want dumb TV.
That won't protect against DNS data exfiltration. Extremely low-bandwidth, but works in a lot of cases - people have even written proxy servers to get slow but working Internet on public hotspots that normally require login.
That is enough for the device to emit a DNS query like "pbs.12345.metricservice.example.com" to notfiy some tracking service that the device with serial 12345 just switched to a channel labeled "PBS". The router will resolve that name record at the DNS server for metricservice.example.com, which gets the request and logs it away.