I thought residential proxies are already banned from SmartTV apps by virtue of practically every APK under the sun being subject to the Google Play terms of service.
The platforms in question here are webOS and Tizen, neither of which are Android or use the Google Play Store.
Not so much for the rest of them that have operating systems with names like Roku TV OS, Tizen, WebOS, and Fire TV OS. They do their own things.
>A Pac-Man smart TV app from Bright Data offers users the choice between viewing ads in the game or agreeing to allow their TV to serve as a residential proxy node.
I don't know how "join your users to a botnet" became some kind of legitimized monetization scheme. Ads are bad enough. What's next? "Participate in a DDOS in order to use our app?"
If there are proxy apps that only do the latter sort of work than I'm actually in favor of them existing and being widespread.
There's all kinds of things that malicious actors want to do where they value coming from an ordinary (comcast, charter, centurylink, shaw cable, whatever) residential IP.
I'm surprised Comcast or some other ISP doesn't step in with a claim of tortious interference. Reselling or granting access to the ISPs services like this is almost always against the ISPs terms of service.
The consumer is in no place to consent to this exchange.
At the very least, consumer connections explicitly disallow "Commercial Use". That means that you can't use them to run a business. You can't use them to turn a profit. You can't use them to generate revenue. That means no running servers, and that means no "reselling 2% of your bandwidth" for a few pennies because some Euro-Trash-Stranger wants to borrow it!
And that's really bad! Far more than reselling, you should very much be able to run a website from home!
No, it’s fair, and probably federally regulated.
You wanna run a business? Then get a business license, pay your business taxes, and sign up for a business Internet connection. That’s what they’re made for. Then run your servers to your heart’s content.
Yeah, the PS and Xbox OSes show you ads, and they have telemetry. But both companies also have an extremely important core functional need of keeping them secure, because possible fuckery with the OS could result in game piracy/DRM bypasses and a direct threat to their revenue models.
Consoles are sometimes sold at a loss, but the revenue model is different. Playstation plus/game pass, a cut of game sales and microtransactions, exclusives, and accessories.
No one should ever connect their TV to the internet. There just isn't any reason to, get access to your streaming apps another way.
https://www.howtogeek.com/its-not-just-streaming-content-you...
What a wild experience 2026 is. But I do feel like a wizard.
This also means that DoH effectively sends all your queries to CloudFlare on FF. Chrome is slightly smarter and tries to map your DNS provider to a DoH implementation if known.
The best way to deal with a TV you don't trust is what no one wants to hear.
Open up the back and disconnect the wifi antenna. It is easy to open them up and everything is pretty simple and obvious once you do.
Upvoted. This is precisely the kind of thing I expect to read on HN.
This does not provide any meaningful protection against data exfiltration. The TV is very possibly using public DNS or outright phoning home through stable IPs.
The cafe I live above in Denmark just has an open network.
Since Roku like other smart TV companies makes money off of user data captur, it's not incentivized to enable those conditions for a downstream device, especially if not specifically advertised as a feature.
There's esp-idf examples from espressif for doing bridging on an esp32 if you have one with a MAC and a PHY and/or spi mac+phy.
Or for wired ethernet, they could include a three port switch IC.
I guess that might make me more trackable?
That made a Samsung behave a little better. But giving it no network access is better.
- No Dolby Vision support, only HDR10+ - Issues with judder/micro stutter - History of nerfing TVs via OTA updates - HDMI ports randomly failing - Bad HDMI-CEC implementation - Selling completely different panel generations under the exact same model names.
Samsung is a complete mess, now charging $5/month to use smarthings with no local control. I'll never buy Samsung.
Android TV even has ads for Disney and Apple, which I never installed.
We don't need treats this badly.
LG's behavior isn't fine, but their monitors don't install crapware on Linux.
Let's not diminish LG's part in all this.
The Linux approach has the downside of not having the drivers if a vendor has not been working with the kernel community before launch (or for those who haven't upgraded to a kernel that has the driver, e.g. a LTS release).
On the other hand, the driver is maintained by kernel developers, not created by the hardware developer who is not getting paid after they sell the device. This helps avoid abandoned / vulnerable drivers, or having the hardware dev search for... alternative revenue streams, as in this case.
What LG sent in for installation is not a simple .inf or .sys/.dll file. They sent in a whole bag of software which does all the nasty things, and Microsoft doesn't vet or care about the software installed as the "driver" of the hardware.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/i...
I guess that from Microsoft's perspective, the driver itself wasn't suspicious, but it installs a questionable sidecar app they would have never vetted anyway.
It's just a device attached to a computer.
But in a Plug-and-Play world, its addition is noticed by the operating system -- as has been normal for decades.
Microsoft's Windows operating system sees this new hardware ID and then goes forth to install whatever-the-fuck software it associates with that identification, presumably as a service to the user. (Did Microsoft approve it? Dunno. I'm just over hear eating popcorn.)
That's what I thought. It is vetted software, just like on Linux. Microsoft just doesn't care if it shows ads.
1. Yes Windows must have "approved" the drivers
2. Windows Update runs automatically and not (usually) manually
3. Automatic update can't even be disabled, only manually postponed a bit
At least 2 and 3 are different on virtually every Linux distro. Also, I find it very unlikely that they would accept such behavior.
To give MS the benefit of the doubt here, now that this happened and has been reported on they might decide to enforce stricter rules on manufacturers in the future. But as a Windows user you don't have a choice in case you don't like how they decide and how their decisions might change again later.
This has an option to disable downloading of auxiliary apps when a device is connected. Yes, it's a Windows Update thing.
> Prevent Windows from auto-installing device companion apps, like LG Monitor App, Alienware Command Center and more.
Here's the thing it does: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat/blob/master/Regfiles...
I swear, OSs have become sports teams.
Linux's 'security model’ has plenty of holes. The very fact the kernel and much of its user-mode is written in C almost guarantees that its security model is worthless. The Linux ecosystem operates on trust and respect that can and has been easily abused by bad actors to provide supply-chain pwnage.
There have been so many zero-click local privilege escalation CVEs I've lost track.
Arch Linux AUR malware: https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/aur-general@lists....
You have confidence you are actually downloading the same foo as everyone else. And if there were an issue there would be pushback. Not so if you get some random exe from warez.com
Yes it isn't perfect, it's still a lot better than windows land.
curl -s script.random-guy.net | sh
I even used uname as a fuzzing tool, and that broke builds spectacularly. There's now a more reasonable uname in the sandbox for builds.
and no, this is not how most software is installed
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/timofurrer/russian-roulette/master/russian-roulette -O - | sudo bashIncreasingly software is distributed by "curl dodgysite.com/get.sh|sudo bash -", no different to running "install.exe" on windows
Surely Windows Update is a vetted repo as much as arch or debian
So something most desktop Linux users don't do.
I guess with more and more consumer devices running Linux based OSes (SteamOS, Android, Bazzite, Silverblue, ..) that becomes more and more interesting.
And unfortunately the "I'm safe on my non-windows-system" argument doesn't count for long, as the 99% muggle crowd justifies a shift to a world where our non-certified (=> 'insecure') systems are not supported by big companies anymore, as it's currently happening on Android.
It's Windows Update that's installing LG crapware upon seeing relevant hardware IDs. That's why the problem affected older monitors too - it's the update side that suddenly started to ship malware.
This is also a misrepresentation. Microsoft has provided LG with a certificate to sign its driver packages with, and allows LG to upload packages to Windows Update, which includes a feature to install sidecar applications. Now, the spirit of this feature is that any application is meant to provide genuine configuration functionality or some graphical front end to the driver's configuration knobs.
LG then abused that feature to provide adware. Now, there are millions of hardware vendors. One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time, this is a matter of trust and respect.
Sometimes one actually wants the app that comes with the device, like AMD's and NVIDIA's configuration trays.
Even so, I fully expect that after this debacle MS will disable this stuff. There is precedent for this. Synaptics/ELAN/Alps touchpad tray applications largely disappeared after MS implemented precision touchpads somewhere in 2015, and suddenly Windows touchpads became as precise as those on Macs. Likewise with RGB peripherals. Even GPU driver applications have increasingly become less useful as the most important features—power control, adaptive sync, HDR, etc have moved into native Windows settings.
Apple seem to do a pretty decent job of just that
At least on Windows, the most you get is a scare screen saying 'this app is from an unidentified developer'. I know what I'd rather have.
Well that and side-loaded LG adware
> after MS implemented precision touchpads somewhere in 2015, and suddenly Windows touchpads became as precise as those on Macs.
There’s still a world of difference between a MacBook touchpad and a windows one. My work laptop (18 month old dell XPS) can’t hold a candle to my 6 year old MacBook’s trackpad.
> Likewise with RGB peripherals. Even GPU driver applications have increasingly become less useful as the most important features—power control, adaptive sync, HDR, etc have moved into native Windows settings.
The peripherals still need the addons though; I have ASUS armory crate, Corsair iCue and MSI center for my Motherboard, cooler and GPU respectively. They all suck.
Oddly I've found otherwise (Dell Precision notebook from 2021, and Surface Laptop). It might be macOS's animations and smoothing interfering here, but I've found that my Windows touchpads are much more responsive, especially when swiping between desktops.
> The peripherals still need the addons though
Ugh, this is annoying. Hardware vendors need to be banned from writing lousy, inefficient, unsafe software.
> Ugh, this is annoying. Hardware vendors need to be banned from writing lousy, inefficient, unsafe software.
Yeah, I commented on the McAfee LG thread but the stuff that comes bundled with hardware is embarassing. I don’t know how Razer, Logitech, nvidia, MSI, asus, etc get away with it. The stuff is awful, even their “good” software. I work in games and a few years ago the biggest correlation we had between unexplained crashes/performance problems in the wild was users having MSI Afterburner installed. Users thought it did great things and fixed a bunch of games but it absolutely thrashed everything we worked very hard to do and caused no end of issues doing so.
Other overlay apps like discord https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1jncrlc/new_ove... have similar issues - the way they work is by drive hooks and drawing over the application; depending on how close you are to the limit and how the game loop is coded this can very easily (and often does) cause micro stuttering, and in cases like discord causes massive performance problems regularly.
Well, this is the whole market on its own. It's entrepreneurship. No different than every web SaaS startup trying to capture some entry-level piece of computer use and then constrain it so it interoperates only with their "net of trusted partners".
They get away with it because everyone is happy and making money - the users, notably, are not part of the group here, and have no voice. The users are resources to be exploited. Same as on the web, and on most markets these days.
The latest Dell trackpads are quite bad. Price or the product being premium or not unfortunately does not tell you if it will have a good trackpad or not. And it changes over time (Dell XPS used to have really good trackpads)
Basically you have to go to a store and try or find reviews that actually pay attention to this.
If you're going to allow 3rd parties to install software on potentially billions of computers with far reaching privileges then you better have something in place other than 'just trust me bro'.
Maybe not, but LG has violated this trust and should therefore be either fined or severely restricted by Microsoft. Banning will likely cause more problems than solutions, but they shouldn't get away with this.
Adware was a huge problem during the Windows XP era, can't believe it's coming back now through Microsoft's official channels.
Also I doubt there's actually millions of hardware vendors. But that aside, Microsoft has a duty to vet everything that they offer through their channels. If it's too expensive for them to do, do like Apple did and have those that want to make use of their distribution network (and trust) pay them.
My point here is simply that it's not the monitor that is installing this. Neither the malware nor the URLs to malware exist on the device - they get fetched as part of normal OS-side auto-provisioning, which is the part that was compromised.
And it's not like MS is too poor to do anything useful for their customers. They just don't want to unless the cost-benefit analysis pans out in their favor. The customer is worth as much as their wallet.
They are downloading and installing something without the users consent.
It's nice to have drivers work without any intervention, same with "helper software" but along side the ease of use they also took on the responsibility.
If I download some random .exe from the net; I have to confirm that I want to run it, sometimes I even have to right click and unblock it to allow it to run, because it is "untrusted".
Their signature key, their auto-run system, everything done for ease of use means they own this.
Otherwise what does "trusted" mean?
Isn't the debacle over? MS know about this by now. What's stopping them from killing it today?
A late resolution is barely a resolution at all. None of this functionality needs new Windows features.
Why not? Microsoft isn't a struggling startup. They can afford to do just that.
And if you really can't act responsibly "at scale" then you shouldn't be allowed that scale.
Self signing a driver should mean just that, not a driver, and a load of other things we feel like foisting on the user.
Half the reason I moved to Linux is because I just wanted to print something without getting a load of advertising from a printer company.
Kinda agree but let's call it "misinformed" or something, instead of a lie.
Of course the details are important on some level. But that doesn't make everything else not matter and it doesn't turn an incomplete explanation into a lie.
The manufacturer implemented choices to deliberately install the software when the monitors are connected. The mechanism is not important to why this is outrageous.
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1v1pkbs/lg_sp... ← examples of others who ran into the same shit
No transcoding, no weird codec issues, just the raw files direct streamed from the underpowered Unraid box, into the back of the AVR where the audio is handled correctly and the video is sent to the screen.
But yeah external stick is much safer solution, then even tvs like TLC are a great brand.
The consumer demand was/is for cheaper, and data mining is how OEMs got there. The general public got what they want, and OEMs got to keep their margins: "win-win".
It's the same thing with (US?) airlines: people wanted cheaper, and that's what was offered and they chose.
Admittedly this doesn't stop the presumed screenshotting and microphone use and worse
You need to hook something up to a network, and another device would have similar risks.
Setting up a sandboxed VPC or auditing traffic is beyond the means of the average TV owner.
Do you think an Apple TV and a Walmart special TV have same risks? I don't. I give the Apple device my network credentials and the TV never sees them.
Another device might not give the free reign for all shitty malware like they do. Apple TV for one wouldn't.
But the replies are missing the point that most people aren't techies and won't go do this. They go to big box store, buy the tv, ask if it has netflix, done.
They won't (and shouldn't need to) install a ATV.
No thanks, I prefer owning my media in a way that corporations can't just take it away whenever they feel like and where I can use (open source) players of my choosing.
The other solution for those who have a flat white wall (or are willing to install a projection screen) and which I used for years and years: use a dumb projector. There are plenty of perfectly fine dumb projectors and they're very cheap too (compared to the equivalent TV). This also made for the largest diagonal I ever had, in a huge living room, which was really great: basically turning the living room into a mini home theater. I painted the walls etc. accordingly, including a special paint for the white projection wall and black for the side and back walls. This was a better experience than any $$$ TV.
Sadly atm I can't use my projector for my wall ain't flat and I can't install a projection screen and I've got nowhere to put my projector: I could use a short-throw one but the place ain't mine and I'm not allowed to drill holes etc.
So atm it's... Pressing the button on the power strip that powers the LG TV. I know, I know: doesn't help much when the TV is on.
Next thing to do is separate all the junk devices (TV, smartphones [the ultimate spying device btw, much more than your TV], smartwatches, tables, etc.) from your proper stuff (e.g. your important PC running Linux/FreeBSD/etc.). I use different physical LANs (and a bridge/router) but VLANs would do too.
Many cheap home routers also by default offer at least a "guest" network: a perfect place the TV and your relatives' devices when they visit and want access. Set usage quota on the guest network too.
At some point all these devices shall use other networks than yours, so you'll be sorry out of luck anyway. But as long as they don't come with their own battery, pressing the button on the power-strip is some kind of giant low-cost "hack this" middle finger.
i've got 2 expensive lg tvs and i bought them because you don't need to use their remote, it just turns on and shows the picture.
I'm, frankly, a bit annoyed by this whole thing; I'd rather have USB adapter RF wireless because it is simpler to deal with vs Bluetooth, but actually I can't even find other Bluetooth keyboards that are as compelling as this K830 and worse yet, they don't even make the K830 anymore. I don't really mind KDE Plasma with just some minor customizations but I don't really like any of the options like Kodi. Maybe Plasma BigScreen will eventually be what I want for that. And finally, HDMI CEC is a pain in the ass. For reasons, I actually use an adapter to get CEC support on a normal PC platform, because most PC HDMI ports can't do it. And also, it's just a bizarre and overly complicated thing. I have it working reliably, but it took some time to iron out all the kinks, particularly because my TV responds quite differently depending on how recently it was powered off.
I really just want a big monitor and to basically just use DPMS... Like a computer does, but large computer monitors tend to be expensive and don't always have remote controls, which admittedly are handy.
> no mouse buttons
Failed at the first sentence.
As for remote control - why would you want one for the monitor. For the PC I'm using an Air Mouse which is just a remote gyro-based mouse with keyboard buttons with a driverless USB dongle that acts like any other USB HID. I also have a miniature no-name wireless keyboard with a touchpad but rarely need to use it.
Only LG themselves should be able to have this kind of invasive control over your television.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/video/how-smart-tvs-may-be-s...
Plenty of uninformed people let their tv on the network, they shouldn’t. A separate box should instead. Tell me I'm wrong?
[1] Let's just forget for a second they are famous for low quality software full of security bugs
I've been running the same Samsung UE40C6530 since 2010. It's 16 f'ng years and the thing works flawlessly like the first day. No other electronic device in my life worked so well, during so long.
But I'm about to move to a new home, and it feels like it's about time to get something more modern, at least a 4k TV.
But I'm honestly totally lost at what to buy. I do not want a "Smart" tv that's slow to start, bloated with crap, installing updates every day, and maybe even spying on me.
I want a plain, old, normal TV. If possible without Android or any advanced operating system. Just a TV. I'll plug external content myself, either via a Chromecast device, or something similar. I don't want my TV to be a full fledged computer.
Is there such a thing? What would you buy nowadays? It seems you're forced to get yet another computer to maintain and be worried about whatever you buy.
Apple TV I got them few years ago just sits there unused.
But then, by standards of two decades ago, every website that cannot legally avoid showing a GDPR popup would be classified as malware. As it should be today. Alas, standards have changed.
This is for a fucking TV.
Very unfortunate.
Glad my 2007 Sony Bravia still works, even if only standard HD.
I own an airgapped LG TV. Does anyone actually want to go class action/mass arb?
Probably. The LG TV I have doesn't have cellular, but does have a removeable Wifi/Bluetooth module [1]. You have to disconnect a ribbon, unscrew the module and then pop it out.
[1] https://www.manualslib.com/manual/3140596/Lg-Oled83g3-Series...
This won't change unless governments create and enforce laws.
What's the difference between running a Tor exit node and a "residential proxy" except optics?
Look: I'm 100% for banning secret proxies that hide from the user, but stopping people knowingly and voluntarily running these proxies is a violation of fundamental software freedom tenets.
The article is quite clear that LG runs an "app store" where 42% of the "apps" likely contain residential proxies, and LG is going to make its "app store" developers stop doing that. From TFA:
> “A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs, and LG Electronics is working with developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform,” Taylor said. “If this option is not removed, these apps will be suspended.”
This says nothing about your own software installed on the TV, should that be possible.
But even if you ran your own software on your TV, would you run a proxy service? Given you already have a residential ISP, you wouldn't need to hook your TV up to a botnet and buy residental ISP access for your scrapers via your own, or other unwitting suckers', TVs.
Your hypothetical of wanting to run a Tor exit node is silly. Most Tor exit node operators run them knowingly on dedicated hardware, usually in a datacentre, not their own home, and prepare themselves legally for when they inevitably get emails from law enforcement, or worse, raided. You'd almost certainly firewall the destinations it can reach, you wouldn't let it have access to your own network, and you wouldn't run it on your TV.
A lack of enforcement actions has caused situations like this.
Why would LG do better when it's cheaper to not?
Note that the same applies for the other privacy invasive webos features. But since that doesn't harm big tech's monopoly they will conveniently avoid mentioning it.
If any of the HN crowd reading this are tech reviewers, make privacy and security a first class feature of the things you review. If it has a network connection then ask hard questions of the manufacturer about how they are managing that massive responsibility and what promises they have about how they will, and won't, use it. Ask what qualifies a 'trusted partner' and get a list of them so you can dig into them and report on how much those partners can or can't be trusted.
I really don't care how bright the screen is if this type of stuff happens. I'd rather watch nothing.
Those cheap/discount tv brands make soo much sense these days
Also this is the reason you down download random crap onto your devices.
I have an LG that is connected on its own network with bare minimal apps (netflix, prime, etc) because it's too convenient for my family. I actually bought it because it didn't display ads on the home screen like the other smart TVs I'd researched. Thought LG was the lesser evil, turns out they're all a bad as each other.
Spur says these SDKs can keep running after the app is closed and only stop when the user deletes the app or opts out. LG says developers must remove them or have their apps suspended, but the article doesn’t say whether that disables existing installs. If it doesn’t, LG needs to tell affected users which apps to remove.
Does webOS have any way to kill an installed app remotely?
I remember seeing privacy guides for smart TVs over the years, does anyone know a place with up to date info?
Most 55inch monitors are now "smart" sadly, so are most "digital signage" products. So there is no longer a way to get a true dumb panel at least over 50 inch
EDIT I am in Australia, there might be products that are available elsewhere but cannot be bought/shipped here
I’m starting to wonder if a monitor and a soundbar with an external tuner is possible.
A decent-ish TV-sized panel with at least a single HDMI input really is all I need.
I got myself a normal, non-smart Philips 49" TV some ten years ago, it's good, but I don't expect to be able to find something similar anymore.
If you want a very specific example, the original nintendo DS can only connect to WEP connections, which meant that when I was there I was able to play parts of DS games that wouldn't have been accessible in the west
I have yet to receive a software update on any of my smart TVs that brought in any positive feature.
Eh, so even sources as reliable as Krebs on Security sometimes engage in bad statistics.
This is a statistic that feels significant, but actually tells you nothing. For all we know, "42% of all apps" can mean a single spray-and-pray campaign with a few hundred downloads in total, with the vast majority of users only downloading apps from the top10, which are all unaffected. Or maybe the problem is widespread across the entire distribution of app downloads, with the majority of users having at least one infected app. We don't know either way, because "42% of apps" is a completely meaningless statistic.