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Comment by gruelsandwich | Hacker News Reader

As an owner of a (2020?) LG WebOS TV, to what degree can I fight this? Any point in trying Pihole with targeted blocking of certain IPs?

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So I have a tv of LG from the same period. I keep it dumb, not connected to the internet and just use an apple TV, so far it's a clean option. And it's always a good idea to have piHole up to, they usually have the block list updated with LG's and Samsungs urls.

The Gamers Nexus video explained that they will connect to nearby open SSID’s to send the data they have collected. So just not connecting it to your network may not be enough.

I hear this a lot as a rumour but has it actually ever been demonstrated in the wild?

Okay, that is nasty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment

Fun fact: some (most?) Samsung TVs of the last ~6 years can't complete OOB setup if they're connected to a PiHoled network with the most vanilla PiHole filters

You can (hopefully) root your TV: https://e.nya.je/getroot/ and then follow a guide like this to disable all the snooping: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/lg-tv-block-mini-how-to/2551...

Disclaimer: I haven't tried any of this myself, I've just been looking into it as I am/was considering buying an LG TV.

The broken, terrible English on that website does not inspire confidence of any kind.

PiHole doesn't block IPs. It blocks DNS. The device have at least three ways to bypass PiHole: use external DNS directly, or pin the phone-home servers' IP addresses, or use some other protocols to carry IP resolution.

I'd just open the TV and yank or desolder the mic out. Or use the TV as a dumb monitor -- don't connect it to WiFi or Ethernet. And use an external Kodi/AppleTV/whatever-rocks-your-viewing-boat

> don't connect it to WiFi or Ethernet

This is not sufficient (for some of these devices) - they will automatically connect to an unsecured hotspot.

well, if that was the case with my TV and/or if I was worried, I've got a soldering iron and I'm not afraid to use it

At this point, best to just keep it disconnected. Just use an apple tv or similar. They sold us a spying device masqueraded as a smart TV.

If internet is really required, I'd personally flood such an LG tv with fake data - add a raspberry pi to provide it with looped audio streams for the microphone, fake bluetooth devices, and so on. But it's still probably a drop in a bucket.

Vote for politicians that vocally campaign against advertising surveillance.

I bought Apple TV many years ago and haven’t plugged tv into internet since.

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