No but things like Amazon sidewalk exist

Not that I have any evidence it's happening, but it'd be more likely for TV manufacturers to partner with ISPs that offer public WiFi using the access points they rent to their customers.

I think the more logical concern would be that it would wait until it could find any potential unsecured wifi to use. I live in an apartment building and there a few wifi access points that I can reach from my apartment with no security. Though one of them appears to be an air conditioner??

Thank you. This is exactly what I was thinking reading people who think you need to do more than simply never connect it to your wifi.

There are available IoT networks it could use, though I don't think all of them run over Wifi.

Not from privacy issues, but all the typical ones from projectors never went anywhere: low brightness, high heat, low maximum operating lifetime, fan noise, and hard to set up (impossible in some places).

Faar less. A larger fraction of projectors remain dumb HDMI to light converters. Tis been my own plan if i settle on wanting a tv.

If it has any kind of in-built smart TV style OS - then yes.

This is actually so very doable in US, cutting deal with those like XFinity.

But if the TV manufacturer is smart in their spying game, they could also be probing for any public SSIDs to connect to when no local internet access is setup.

So your TV just connects to random wifi networks? That sounds a bit insane.

Setup an unprotected network that is isolated and you fully control, see if it connects at all.

Dogsitter in my case.

This seems very specific.............you wanna talk about it? /hug-offer

Happened to elderly relatives. I had it set up so nicely and someone 'helped', and then it seems rude to disconnect what they did.

This. I've had this happen with relatives who come to visit. It's unkind to tell them "Don't fuck with the TV" or "Ignore the TV if it tells you it wants to connect to something."

They want to be "helpful" and show me they can "work tech" by doing stuff like this. They don't understand that the TV is manipulating them. I don't want to have to explain to them that I'm basically a neurosurgeon and they just tried to impress me by drilling a hole in somebody's head. Because the TV told them to.

Disconnecting the wifi avoids the need for unpleasant conversations.

Yours too? Dang.

Do you have any specific examples of devices where this has been implemented? Because I've heard this idea thrown around a lot as a hypothetical, but never any concrete evidence that it's been done.

Why would I care that some device to which I never gave a shred of my personal information of any kind (e.g. not logging it into any online account) found an open public network that I don't use and that has no connection to me?

Sure, I would be disturbed that it's doing that sort of thing in spite of Wi-Fi being explicitly turned off.

What is the threat to me though?

While I've certainly heard plenty of theorizing about the possibility of this happening, I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that it has ever been done.

EDIT: What I am referring to here is the specific allegation that smart TVs will connect to open wireless networks without being commanded to do so. It's not a catch-all for any nefarious thing involving TVs or wireless networks.

How many open WiFi networks are there within range of your TV?

Even ISP routers come with a default password now. I can't remember the last time I found an actual open WiFi.