I hear this a lot “TVs will just connect to a nearby unprotected WiFi network!” But I ve never seen any evidence of it. It appears to just be speculation, unless you have an actual source?

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8fingerlouie 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Because they don't. It's too much guesswork, and honestly pretty complicated. From the user perspective the TV would appear to go offline every now and then, so also somewhat easily detected.

It's much easier to just throw a $10 5G modem in there, pay the $2/year subscription fee for service, and extract data that way. Assuming a 5-10 year relevant lifespan of the TV, they'd throw $20-$30 on top of the sales price for the modem and 10 years of service.

The 5G modem could run completely independent of the wifi network, be a completely different circuit, and you'd never know it was there.

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deadbunny 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Its always speculation that would be trivial to actually test.

1. Do not connect to network 2. Create unauthenticated WiFi network 3. Monitor WiFi network

Strange no one has ever done this simple af test to backup their claims

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account42 7 hours ago | parent [-]

If TV manufacturers wanted to be underhanded then they could actually make this much harder to detect by delaying the connection to new unauthenticated networks for e.g. months or only after seeing another device connect and then using that device's MAC when it is not around.

	▲	deadbunny 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Still super easily detectable even if they clone a MAC.

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lxgr 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They could also use something like Amazon Sidewalk or ATSC 3.0's dedicated return channel.

	▲	sgerenser 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They could (although I’m not sure of the 80Kbps that Amazon sidewalk allows is really sufficient for the purpose of uploading ACR data), but is there any evidence that any TV manufacturer actually is? The reality is, why would they bother? 95% percent of people that buy a “Smart TV” hook it right up to their WiFi as soon as they take it out of the box.

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MilanTodorovic 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seeing how things have recently been developing, I'd bet on it already being the case or at least in active development.

	▲	sgerenser 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you think its already the case, how come nobody can provide any evidence of it? As stated above, it’s trivial to test. Surely if Brand X was doing this, there’d already be blog posts, youtube videos, HN posts, etc. about it?