A hacker reverse-engineered his own Samsung TV and found alarming spying activity, including code that used connected devices’ microphones to listen to users.
1996: cameras, microphones, radios, in your appliances? You’re schizophrenic
2026: removing the cameras, microphones, and radios from the appliances we use to spy on you is illegal.
It is very irritating that ppl just accepted that. It wasn’t forced on us by law. We just… bought the stuff. It was so shiny! Now we have a mass surveilance apparatus that would make the Stasi blush.
Lots of us saw the terrible potential. But way more of us didn’t.
Never connect your proprietary appliances to the internet. A TV is just a display, use another device to manage what it displays.
These events need to be crimes.
Not like that, OpenAI!
I kind of need a tutorial how to use a samsung (or whatever brand) smart tv without them tracking us like that - but with still being able to stream netflix and stuff, I just wanna have both, streaming & privacy 😭
Disconnect your TV from the internet and use a streaming stick. AppleTV is the least evil among the commercial ones. So you still have the normal streaming experience without the TV spying on you. However, as others have mentioned, these TVs are so bad that they try to find nearby unsecured wifi to transmit your data. So unless your immediate neighbors all have password protected wifi, and no one with an open hotspot gets in range, there’s still a chance.
I’m sorry to break it to you but streaming services and privacy don’t mix. Your best bet is to sail the high seas.
