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Comment by tjoff | Hacker News Reader

Airgapped is harder than you might think. If your TV finds an open network (neigbours?) it will use that one. And it is only a matter of time before they have cellular capabilities too.

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> If your TV finds an open network (neigbours?) it will use that one

I looked into this last year while researching TVs and couldn’t find anything to substantiate it.

When was the last time you saw a completely open residential wifi access point in the wild?

This seems a little like worrying about getting Dodo poisoning.

Mine up until a few months ago. Didn't really care because you'd have to stop literally in front of my house to access it. And living on a street with only about 4 properties, that would merit a visit from me asking why you're parked in front of my house.

> When was the last time you saw a completely open residential wifi access point in the wild?

I have family who get frustrated with their home Wi-fi and about every other year conclude the solution is to unsecure the connection.

I'm not sure Comcast would even let me do that today, though I haven't tried. I gave up running my own home router and WiFi a few years ago, they just made it too much of a PITA.

maybe not residential, but if you are close to a coffee shop or bar or anything else that offers it...

I genuinely don't recall the last time I saw one of those that didn't require me to at least go to a registration page to accept the terms and conditions in order to actually transmit any traffic.

Maybe 10 years ago. Very few homes have an open network today, ISPs all ship their routers with random passwords and/or force the customer to create a WiFi password during setup.

Comcast still defaults to adding an Xfinity access point to their routers for other customers to use.

Which requires login (and a separate paid subscription these days).

> Airgapped is harder than you might think

Probably. The LG TV I have doesn't have cellular, but does have a removeable Wifi/Bluetooth module [1]. You have to disconnect a ribbon, unscrew the module and then pop it out.

[1] https://www.manualslib.com/manual/3140596/Lg-Oled83g3-Series...

Sometimes those "modules" are just the antenna, and the Wifi is quite capable of connecting with no antenna at all.

All radios (including those that do wifi stuff inside of televisions) need an antenna in order to perform wireless communications.

An antenna may be obvious and external (like one on the fender of a 1979 Ford Pinto), or built with very deliberate PCB traces (as with a Raspberry Pi), or incidental (some component of the device behaves as an antenna, even if unintentionally), or a combination of these things, or something else entirely.

But whatever its form: An antenna must be present or wireless RF communication simply can't occur.

Make it a tinfoil hat :-)

Aah yes, the ol' "Emergency Wi-Fi Connection" Nintendo uses to make really scary anti-piracy screens where they dial 911 and call the cops on you playing a pirated version of New Super Mario Bros U.

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