Hacker News Reader

Comment by forestry | Hacker News Reader

What’s stopping you from disconnecting it from wifi mow?

This is also my question, but I suppose the answer could be that we don't trust LG to actually forget the wifi password (and not use it surreptitiously later). You could also change the wifi info, but that might mean changing a whole lot of devices (including wife's and kids).

The gamers nexus thing touched on this.. Apparently some ignore that choice and connect to open wifi or something like Comcasts modem hijacking wifi.

they stated it technical could. not that they have evidence of that happening.

Technically, they could do a whole bunch of things, including doing multihop routing via other connected televisions or insecure WiFi networks. There's no evidence that they do this, as far as I know, but also no reason why they couldn't do this in the future if they wanted to.

You're right. I think I conflated allegations in the comments with the actual claims made in the Youtube video.

GM did show that the devices scan for open wifi networks, and users in the comments have claimed that it connects without their permission.

Gamers nexus did not make that claim about them actually connecting though.

What about letting it connect to your Wi-Fi and blocking it via firewall? Does it try to find another network?

So change the wifi password.

I did bring that up in the second sentence of my two-sentence comment.

The fact you don't do it means you actually don't care at all about your privacy. It takes 5 minutes to bring every member in an household in the living room or kitchen and assist them to change the wifi password on their device.

You can even prepare for it by printing the details + qrcode beforehand.

Connecting to a wifi network is one of those things every terminally connected non tech savy people are able to do these days.

I think the GP more meant the practice that some ISPs have of shipping default routers that may or may not be able to be replaced with a separate SSID that is publicly available for use by other customers of that ISP.

Not "my network has a default or empty password, I can't make people sign in again."

Is that really a thing? My ISP gives me a router that takes an SSID/password by default (that it gets back to if I reset to defaults) but I can change it any time as well as other parameters (like channels, wether WPS is activated, etc).

Buy a crap router (or find one in the trash), dont connect it to anything, set open wifi, tv connects to the black hole, sorta poor mans pi-hole

Would it detect the lack of Internet and try another one?

Okay, you may want to reread the thread, I'm not OP. I'm not the "you" you think I am.

Also, some people have a lot of wifi connected devices, including stuff like light bulbs. (Again, not me.)

If someone is supposedly concerned about being recorded, having their privacy invaded etc. but they're too lazy to change the wifi password and deal with the trivial inconvenience of changing it on other household devices then in this case the revealed preference really is that they don't really care.

Would be easy to capture wifi traffic if it did though.

Sorry but I don't understand this line of reasoning. You worry about a smart TV going online without your permission and yet you trust it enough to keep it around your home and keep it online???

I don't mean to be rude but it sounds like you just don't want to confront the rest of your household about taking the TV offline and are coming up with excuses to tell yourself this is actually fine.

You're making a huge assumption that it does not remember wifi passwords and that it would actually honor your request. You're assuming it does not communicate with/via other LG devices owned by neighbors. You're assuming it does not communicate via partner apps on mobile and other partner devices over other protocols. You're assuming they won't eventually simply add cellular modems to circumvent all of this.

> You're making a huge assumption that it does not remember wifi passwords and that it would actually honor your request.

I would expect an hn member to be able to change their own wifi password and assist members of their household in changing it on their device.

> You're making a huge assumption that it does not remember wifi passwords and that it would actually honor your request.

Has it been observed?

> You're making a huge assumption that it does not remember wifi passwords and that it would actually honor your request.

Like what? I don't think mobile apps can roll and implement their own protocol on an android or apple phone without specific authorization.

> You're making a huge assumption that it does not remember wifi passwords and that it would actually honor your request.

We are talking here about a specific, already owned device.

You're making a lot of assumptions that would be easy to find out if true.

Block the TV via its MAC address then?

If it does MAC spoofing, then just take it out back and shoot it. That's properly malicious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com