Its an old LG, but given the recent light on the lengths they'll go to spy on us, I figured this guy was better off without any ability to even connect wirelessly. Don't know if the Ethernet still works but I plan on keeping my TVs as dumb as possible, HDMI only.

If you're wondering how to open lg TVs you just have to remove all the screws then start pulling open at the bottom and open the clips going up. With the TV face down on a soft surface just keep pulling on the back case from the bottom, it'll take some effort to pop open. The top edge folds open more like a hidge than clips.

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[–] 179 points 1 month ago (29 children)

The problem is researchers found out that lg tvs will scan available ssids and connect to any network available to deliver its payload back to LG, without your knowledge or consent

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  • [+] 26 points 1 month ago (10 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    It's something that has been said for years now about smart TVs in general not just LG, but I haven't been able to find any conclusive evidence that it's happening... And obviously it can't be proven that it's NOT happening.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

    Read the arstechnica article, watch the videos linked in said article

    It scans your network for devices, and they promote visibility to connected devices

    “The [G5] crawled our entire network and found dozens of unrelated devices, including smartwatches and phones of our staff who didn’t even know we were working on this,” Steve Burke, Gamers Nexus’ editor-in-chief, said.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago

    I have an offline LG TV and an open isolated guest network it could theoretically connect to. I check periodically and it has never attempted to do so.

    Just an anecdote, but I personally have seen no evidence of this happening.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    Do you have neighbors with a non password protected gateway or router to the open internet? Open unsecured networks seem so rare these days.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Some devices can create unadvertised networks, they might just go over a list of possible ids

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Hypothetically, if I were an evil data mining corporation, I would setup my devices to talk to each other on a proprietary protocol, so if any one of my devices has access to the internet, all of them could use it to exfil data. I'd also advertise and heavily incentivise users to download and install an app to "get the best experience" with my devices, and then use that app to exfil data from any of my devices, even if the person with the app doesn't own them.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (2 children)

    fucking printers. also tire pressure monitoring systems. if i were an evil corporation i would use TPMS to communicate

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (5 children)

    what would happen if i set up a little router with a virtual internet right next to the tv? i was a hardware guy in the 90s so like, i am the teensiest bit out of date

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    If it can't phone home and get a response it will fail over to searching for any open wifi it can find. You could put the TV in a metal box, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a TV.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    i guess i wanted it to phone home on my fake internet? i am not the word good today, it is rehearsal day and i am thinking about music

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago

    It would be doing that, but it would also be trying to connect to any open WiFi available. Your neighbors xfinity modem that broadcasts their open public WiFi. Phones with hotspots. Anything it can, it will try to connect to. If it can't make it out through that channel, it logs all that info to send when it can.

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