42% of the apps on LG's platform have these quasi-malware SDKs in them? Seems kinda bad, whether it's due to negligence or just pure incompetence? You'd think there might be legal consequences for a corporation that lets their app store turn into a malware delivery system?
drnick1 5 hours ago [-]
It's not "quasi-malware," it is malware.
b3orn 2 hours ago [-]
15 years ago people would've called it spyware.
TeMPOraL 2 hours ago [-]
20 years ago people would've called it a trojan horse.
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.
tosti 2 hours ago [-]
There were no cookie popups 20 years ago.
_joel 45 minutes ago [-]
Err, there were, prepare to feel old "Cookie consent pop-ups first started appearing following the adoption of the ePrivacy Directive in 2002" 25 years!
reactordev 7 minutes ago [-]
I beg to differ, there absolutely was cookie popups. We also had popup windows, popup ads, java applets that melted your cpu, and browsers with no grid.
ledoge 51 minutes ago [-]
I think they meant that the use of cookies for analytics/tracking, which is what triggers the popup requirement, would have been considered malicious.
Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago [-]
It's all above board though, as you, the user, agreed to the terms & conditions for installing said app.
This won't change unless governments create and enforce laws.
account42 1 hours ago [-]
Terms and conditions are not the get out of consumer protections free card that you think it is.
ethbr1 39 minutes ago [-]
They are, unless governments actually crack down.
A lack of enforcement actions has caused situations like this.
Why would LG do better when it's cheaper to not?
quotemstr 2 hours ago [-]
It is, though. Why should I not be able to agree, with sufficiently informed consent, to route traffic through a connection I operate via a computer I own using software I've chosen of my own free will to install?
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.
ozlikethewizard 2 hours ago [-]
The difference is the user. Your average smart TV user doesn't know what a residential proxy is, hell who's installing/playing the games but children? Consumer regulation to protect consumers from a knowledge disparity that leads to uninformed consent isn't a bad thing imo.
quotemstr 53 minutes ago [-]
So, to be clear, you think you should decide what software smart TV users can run on their own devices?
ethbr1 35 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
account42 1 hours ago [-]
We're not talking about people voluntarily installing proxies, we're talking about proxies piggy backing on apps that are marketed for an entirely different purpose.
quotemstr 51 minutes ago [-]
The article is clear that LG is talking about banning all proxies, even voluntarily installed ones. A smart TV is a computer. Why should the owner of a computer not be allowed to run any program he wants?
windward 2 hours ago [-]
It all comes back to this. I pay for the network, I'm liable for it: I decide what comes through it.
JumpCrisscross 4 hours ago [-]
> You'd think there might be legal consequences
I own an airgapped LG TV. Does anyone actually want to go class action/mass arb?
tjoff 2 hours ago [-]
Airgapped is harder than you might think. If your TV finds an open network (neigbours?) it will use that one. And it is only a matter of time before they have cellular capabilities too.
JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago [-]
> Airgapped is harder than you might think
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.
LG's behavior isn't fine, but their monitors don't install crapware on Linux.
drnick1 6 hours ago [-]
Another win for the Linux security model (software installed and updated manually from vetted repos only).
gblargg 5 hours ago [-]
Wait, you're saying a monitor can just advertise a URL over the video connection for its driver and then Windows will blindly install it, without user confirmation? I thought that LG had submitted these "drivers" (adware) to Microsoft and they approved it.
Sophira 3 hours ago [-]
As far as I'm aware, the monitor does not transmit a URL. Windows is looking at the hardware's vendor and device IDs and using those to look up and download the "drivers" that LG has stated are for that device.
stkdump 5 hours ago [-]
I think the point is that:
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.
I believe you register your device with Microsoft so Windows can automatically obtain and install drivers for them when they are plugged in.
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.
debugnik 2 hours ago [-]
This is actually a feature of the .inf by design, an AddSoftware directive. It can even link to apps from the store instead of bundling them with the driver. This is designed to install settings panels like the ones for GPUs.
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.
ssl-3 5 hours ago [-]
Eh? No.
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.)
gblargg 2 hours ago [-]
> Eh? No.
That's what I thought. It is vetted software, just like on Linux. Microsoft just doesn't care if it shows ads.
ssl-3 2 hours ago [-]
That's an excellent and terrific point. In this way, the dichotomy between Windows and Linux can be as if they're just two sides of the same "vetted" coin.
ChocolateGod 2 hours ago [-]
> software installed and updated manually from vetted repos only
So something most desktop Linux users don't do.
graemep 2 minutes ago [-]
Virtually all desktop Linux users do. The biggest exception is AUR as its not vetted.
windward 1 hours ago [-]
'desktop Linux' is a term used when the majority of Linux users don't support your argument.
benj111 35 minutes ago [-]
Are you disputing that the repos are vetted or that users use them???
voidUpdate 4 hours ago [-]
sudo dkpg -i FileYouDownloadedFromAnywhere.deb
mDyJzDPmBdG 2 hours ago [-]
Let's be real, in most cases it is:
curl -s script.random-guy.net | sh
It is such glaring security hole that there was an old submission about filling such install script with `sleep` commands and detecting it on server side, to send different versions for downloading (and reviewing) and for actual direct execution.
tosti 1 hours ago [-]
I use those scripts to improve the likelyhood it'll fail to do anything useful.
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.
redeeman 1 hours ago [-]
the method you describe is clearly only done by people that are irresponsible and most probably stupid.
and no, this is not how most software is installed
Increasingly 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
krige 5 hours ago [-]
Surely you mean Linux security model (not relevant enough to be targeted by big tech)?
trelane 2 hours ago [-]
Famously, the Linux kernel does not have a stable ABI for drivers. As a result, by far the majority of drivers are in-tree, maintained by the kernel folks as part of the kernel.
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.
dns_snek 5 hours ago [-]
It's not a weakness that they targeted and exploited, it's a feature that was purposefully implemented by Microsoft.
krige 2 hours ago [-]
If you're trying to say that Microsoft implemented a method of delivering specifically malware executables to every PC, I've got a bridge to sell to you.
Let's not diminish LG's part in all this.
delta_p_delta_x 5 hours ago [-]
> Another win for the Linux security model
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.
AUR is an effectively unmoderated user repo. It’s not Arch Linux’s core repository, nor is it enabled by default or indeed even possible to use without manual downloads from outside the package manager.
benj111 30 minutes ago [-]
There's still a security there though.
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.
opan 5 hours ago [-]
I think you can probably find a better example, even if less recent. The AUR is unofficial and not properly vetted in the same way as the actual Arch repos, Debian repos, etc.
TeMPOraL 5 hours ago [-]
The monitors aren't installing anything. That headline was a lie.
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.
delta_p_delta_x 5 hours ago [-]
> It's Windows Update that's installing LG crapware upon seeing relevant hardware IDs
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.
Cthulhu_ 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
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.
account42 56 minutes ago [-]
> One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time
Why not? Microsoft isn't a struggling startup. They can afford to do just that.
rincebrain 31 minutes ago [-]
Because at scale, that doesn't work, I think, even money no object, because it's a task that requires a lot of domain knowledge, but also is monotonous and offers little in the way of satisfaction or looking good on your resume, so the candidates you're trying to hire aren't very junior, and also are not going to like the work.
windward 2 hours ago [-]
>Even so, I fully expect that after this debacle MS will disable this stuff.
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.
TeMPOraL 2 hours ago [-]
My point is not to shift the blame to Microsoft; it's primarily LG that's at fault here.
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.
tosti 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, and it's only possible thanks but no thanks to MicroSlop.
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.
maccard 4 hours ago [-]
I agree with you on the precedent
> 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.
doikor 4 hours ago [-]
> 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.
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.
delta_p_delta_x 4 hours ago [-]
> There’s still a world of difference between a MacBook touchpad and a windows one
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.
maccard 4 hours ago [-]
On the trackpads - I only ever use my MacBook as a single screen device, so the experience may be different. A long time ago I used it with an external monitor and the experience was very poor compared to windows.
> 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.
TeMPOraL 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
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.
chronogram 3 hours ago [-]
What part of Afterburner caused issues? I have it installed to undervolt an old GPU but not actively running.
denkmoon 4 hours ago [-]
I can only imagine the meetings at microsoft HQ where they all sat around a table and crossed their fingers and hoped that vendors would act in the spirit of their design.
benj111 25 minutes ago [-]
If they aren't willing to vet, they should at least be keeping the update minimal. Ie no 'sidecar' apps.
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.
21asdffdsa12 4 hours ago [-]
The commercial software landscape more and more reminds me of a civil war torn town. Everyone shooting at everyone, a dark forest through and through
noir_lord 2 hours ago [-]
It’s more a tragedy of the commons, we are the commons.
Aaargh20318 3 hours ago [-]
> 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.
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'.
petesergeant 4 hours ago [-]
> 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.
Apple seem to do a pretty decent job of just that
delta_p_delta_x 4 hours ago [-]
The situation is very different on Macs. Apple control almost the entire hardware stack of the machines that macOS runs on. They make it an absolute pain in the neck to run any application not blessed by attestation. This attestation server is also frequently offline. They've also made it very difficult to write things like filesystem drivers, having completely pulled that functionality from more recent versions of macOS. In fact, if I recall correctly one cannot ship a third-party kext on more recent Macs, especially ARM ones. As such, hackintoshing has basically vanished as a hobby.
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.
petesergeant 3 hours ago [-]
> At least on Windows, the most you get is a scare screen
Well that and side-loaded LG adware
felooboolooomba 5 hours ago [-]
> That headline was a lie.
Kinda agree but let's call it "misinformed" or something, instead of a lie.
fauigerzigerk 3 hours ago [-]
I would say it's neither a lie nor misinformed. It 's a punchier headline that can be justified by what the user experiences. The user connects a monitor which causes ads to appear. The rest of this Rube Goldberg contraption is a mere detail.
TeMPOraL 2 hours ago [-]
Those details are the only thing that matter. Without them, all you have is superstition.
fauigerzigerk 1 hours ago [-]
I disagree. It matters that LG makes ads appear on their customers' screens as a deterministic consequence of connecting one of their monitors. It's not superstition.
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.
account42 58 minutes ago [-]
The headline isn't a lie, even if you can technically nitpick it.
The manufacturer implemented choices to deliberately install the software when the monitors are connected. The mechanism is not important to why this is outrageous.
meta-level 6 hours ago [-]
yet?
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.
Gigachad 5 hours ago [-]
The LG scandal specifically relies on the fact windows will auto install OEM crapware as soon as you plug it in. No other OS does that.
rconti 5 hours ago [-]
Huh? What does WebOS have to do with windows?
smackeyacky 4 hours ago [-]
LG monitors not TVs
ahartmetz 5 hours ago [-]
"Fortunately", agent Poettering is on the case, implementing remote attestation for Linux so we can all be secure. Barf.
michaelchisari 6 hours ago [-]
Never once had a problem with an LG because I've never given it internet access. A trustworthy set top box handles everything instead. Concerned that might not be an option in the future.
jmward01 6 hours ago [-]
That is my problem. What can you trust anymore? Is there an appliance out there that can do the basics and not be a malware gateway?
jddj 3 hours ago [-]
You could give it a vpn to a public cloud provider so that even if they run residential proxies they still get a dirty vps IP.
Admittedly this doesn't stop the presumed screenshotting and microphone use and worse
mapt 6 hours ago [-]
Smart TVs replaced dumb TVs not out of consumer demand, but out of subsidy from commercial databrokers and streaming services. Despite adding $100 of hardware they were priced $100 cheaper.
throw0101a 28 minutes ago [-]
> Smart TVs replaced dumb TVs not out of consumer demand […]
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.
modo_mario 4 hours ago [-]
Is there still any specific brand known for dumb tv's that features the quality and 'non smart' options of the smart variants?
throw0101a 26 minutes ago [-]
Many OEMs have "commercial" / "corporate" displays that may be applicable:
I'm always wondering how hard it would be to just remove the hardware for spying. Just keep enough hardware to make it a dumb panel, remove the webos logic boards, wifi antenna, etc.
iso1631 4 hours ago [-]
Consumers will happily sell their data for a $100 discount. Hell they'll waste 20 minutes watching adverts to save $1.
gblargg 5 hours ago [-]
LG now installs adware when you merely connect one of their monitors to a Windows PC.
I'm mostly very happy with my LG C4 as a home theatre centerpiece, and I did have it online so that I could use the apps for YouTube and Jellyfin. However, the lack of support for modern 4k rips (HEVC+DTS) ended up being a dealbreaker and I finally ditched the built in software for a fire stick instead.
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.
kakacik 2 hours ago [-]
There is always android VLC app to decode anything, you just need enough power in chipset to handle that. Not perfect, had some quirks unseen on desktop VLC but generally fine.
But yeah external stick is much safer solution, then even tvs like TLC are a great brand.
tosti 1 hours ago [-]
I had a TCL TV unrelated to the programming language, and the ghosting was awful.
manarth 4 hours ago [-]
Want to stream Netflix? Disney+? Hulu?
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.
account42 34 minutes ago [-]
> Want to stream Netflix? Disney+? Hulu?
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.
timc3 4 hours ago [-]
Apple TV is the usual recommendation.
coldtea 3 hours ago [-]
>You need to hook something up to a network, and another device would have similar risks.
Another device might not give the free reign for all shitty malware like they do. Apple TV for one wouldn't.
qq66 3 hours ago [-]
> and another device would have similar risks
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.
mlrtime 57 minutes ago [-]
You have 3 replies all saying the same thing, install a ATV...
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.
TacticalCoder 2 hours ago [-]
Press the button to turn off the power strip when you're not watching it.
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.
CivBase 8 hours ago [-]
Stop buying LG TVs.
smcleod 8 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately they make arguably the best OLEDs and webOS is pretty decent to use (especially compared to the terrible OS that Samsung and Sony run). I think the best thing people can do is update their firmware then disconnect it from the internet. Using an AppleTV or similar provides a better experience than any TVs built in apps anyway.
cosmic_cheese 6 hours ago [-]
I don’t ever use their “smart” functionality (that’s what my Apple TV is for) but I’ve never had any issues with the Google TV (Android) build that Sony ships. It doesn’t nag me about being kept offline, is reasonably fast, and doesn’t even show its home screen unless I specifically summon it, so it checks my boxes.
mey 7 hours ago [-]
How important is "the best" OLED vs the second best or 100th best OLED? I am personally ok not buying the bleeding edge to not get malware onto my OS.
notatoad 7 hours ago [-]
reasonably important, if you're never connecting your lg tv to any network, and just connecting it to an AppleTV or something and letting HDMI-CEC control it so you never even see their OS.
StumpChunkman 7 hours ago [-]
Exactly this. And with an Apple TV 4K Ethernet, you've got a bonus Thread border router for smart home devices. I actually didn't even realize that initially, but was very pleased when I found IKEAs latest round of Matter over Thread devices paired nicely with it and my existing Home Assistant + Hue setup.
eproxus 2 hours ago [-]
And if you install Tailscale you can even use it as an exit node to surf from home when you're traveling.
drnick1 6 hours ago [-]
I would suggest a mini-PC running Linux and Plasma Bigscreen instead of an AppleTV if you want something 100% private and user-controlled.
przmk 4 hours ago [-]
Unless you're using streaming services like Netflix, in which case you're stuck with 720p because of widevine.
N19PEDL2 5 hours ago [-]
Do you recommend any specific distro for this?
smcleod 4 hours ago [-]
If you care about home cinema it's important. There's a pretty big jump down. You can look up the specs and reviews of the C and G series from LG. Anecdotally quite a few times when people see my 7 year old LG C9 I've had them ask if it was some new expensive TV as they are so impressed with the picture.
theplumber 7 hours ago [-]
If you care about malware you do not plug it into the internet. I think windows computers are pretty mallwareish as well or at least spyware. People who buy Oled buy them because they care about PQ.
altairprime 5 hours ago [-]
2nd best, not. 100th, better to get a great LCD than a junk OLED?
7 hours ago [-]
globular-toast 6 hours ago [-]
Exactly. If you get the best today it'll be the second best tomorrow anyway. Absolute position is undetectable, you can only perceive change. Use that to your advantage and stay off the treadmill.
smcleod 4 hours ago [-]
7 years into my C9 and it never fails to impress.
Bud 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
windward 1 hours ago [-]
>I think the best thing people can do is update their firmware then disconnect it from the internet.
We don't need treats this badly.
jedberg 7 hours ago [-]
I haven’t looked recently but last I checked Samsung made the best panels. Has that changed recently?
nvme0n1p1 7 hours ago [-]
Samsung scored highest on https://www.rtings.com/ for my criteria, and I'm happy with the purchase. I didn't connect it to the network, of course. (I had to stop my handyman from connecting it and he seemed to think I was crazy for insisting.)
lostlogin 5 hours ago [-]
I installed a Pihole and set an edge router to direct any port 53 traffic that wasn’t from the Pihole, to the Pihole.
That made a Samsung behave a little better. But giving it no network access is better.
ahartmetz 7 hours ago [-]
"I work in software. I have seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate..."
- 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.
mDyJzDPmBdG 2 hours ago [-]
Also: Samsung thinks "your" TV is perfect place for them to display their ads.
smcleod 7 hours ago [-]
Their panels are often over-saturated with that fake HDR like look, similar to their phones.
ahartmetz 7 hours ago [-]
Most screens come with "showroom settings" out of the box. You need to configure them to something more neutral once and then it's fine.
smcleod 6 hours ago [-]
I'm aware of that setting, but this is the Samsung baseline. The panels they export for OEMs / other manufacturers don't seem to have the same hyper saturation. Even just standing next to someone using a Samsung phone or tablet you can often spot it straight away we know you what to look for.
ahartmetz 5 hours ago [-]
Even phones have screen settings these days (much less detailed than monitors). On my Motorola phone w/ OLED screen, I turned off "vibrant colors" or something like that. Maybe the people you saw didn't bother or liked it. Maybe there is something that can't be turned off, who knows. I only have semi-regular experience with an older (and non OLED) Samsung tablet which seems fine.
TeMPOraL 5 hours ago [-]
Over saturated HDR is a good default in times when all TV shows only use various shades of pitch black.
PowerElectronix 6 hours ago [-]
That goes away if you set them in filmaker mode.
PowerElectronix 6 hours ago [-]
No, qd-oled is still best, LG is closing the gap with tandem oled but is still the second best panel tech.
mlrtime 52 minutes ago [-]
Samsung is worse, their OS is horrendous. LG allows local control fairly well and has Home Assistant support.
Samsung is a complete mess, now charging $5/month to use smarthings with no local control. I'll never buy Samsung.
Yizahi 3 hours ago [-]
I thought webOS was pretty decent initially. But LG never provided even a single major update to my TV in a decade, so that just about cancels any possible benefits from the faster code. I'm using Chromecast for several years now, bypassing and ignoring webOS completely. But the initial idea was nice, all those years ago.
smcleod 2 hours ago [-]
Really? I've had many updates over the 7 years since my c9 was released, still getting them as recent as earlier this year I think.
Yizahi 12 minutes ago [-]
Just to clarify - my LG TV is old (10 or maybe 11?), pre-OLED, and webOS on it was version 3.0. Maybe situation has improved with newer models, I don't know. The problem with TVs, is that they really work for a long time just fine and I see no reason to change it ahead of other more needed upgrades. It doesn't fall to the ground like phones, there is no degrading battery or degrading rubber/textile parts, TVs are really robust. So it would have been nice if the software for such long living hardware was also supported accordingly and that buyers would be informed about that in advance and that was my expectation for webOS/LG originally - since it is in C++, uses modern and maintained QT framework, snappy and LG is a bigcorpo, I expected it to keep up. But nope :( .
Angostura 2 hours ago [-]
I have mine attached to the internet, but it does take a good 30 minutes plus Googling to find out all the places that you have to turn stuff off.
pjmlp 6 hours ago [-]
Have to agree, WebOS is much better than Android TV OS, with ads on the dashboard.
Gigachad 5 hours ago [-]
As long as you keep it off the internet. Otherwise it’s absolute loaded with adverts everywhere.
pjmlp 5 hours ago [-]
Not the 2020 version I have, it has a suggested shows row from the apps I have already installed, which makes sense.
Android TV even has ads for Disney and Apple, which I never installed.
Angostura 2 hours ago [-]
I have a 2026 LG, attached to the internet - absolutely no ads. You need to tweak the settings
Leonard_of_Q 6 hours ago [-]
You can replace the Android TV launcher with an alternative like Projectivy [1] to get rid of whatever nonsense the stock launcher tries to push. Add Flicky [2] to address F-Droid and you've got a nuisance-free Android TV.
Thanks, however is kind of the problem, it shouldn't be a thing in first place.
tosti 1 hours ago [-]
3 out of 4 OLED screens in my household suffer from burned pixels. It's the early 90s all over again with OLED.
account42 32 minutes ago [-]
How old are these and how often / how long are they turned on? My OLED TV is over two years old now without any issues even though it gets frequent usage.
mlrtime 55 minutes ago [-]
I have 3 LG OLEDs of all different generation and they all still go great. It is by far the best tv you can get vs other manufacturers.
And buy what? Smasnug? Sony? They're all uniquely shit.
MiddleEndian 7 hours ago [-]
My LG DualUp monitors (with no internet access) recently triggered some LG Adware Bullshit to install on my Windows laptop. So I'd say stop using LG anything (or Windows anything since they're voluntarily in on the scam too lol). If you want the 2560x2880, maybe buy the knock-off INNOCN vertical monitors.
I would probably have a DualUp by now if I could find one available anywhere: it's a very appealing form factor. I looked at the INNOCN site, but only see normal-looking monitors there; do you have a model name or any pointers I could search for?
7 hours ago [-]
gambiting 2 hours ago [-]
The problem I have is....it just works. I'm tired of having to manage 50 different devices to let my son watch some Gabbys Dollhouse on the TV. Our LG CX is now 6 years old and it just works. I only need one remote for all the apps and sound, and I don't need to worry about another device. I've tried both Apple TV and Amazon Fire Stick, and both were (subjectively) worse experiences than just using the apps built into the TV. So.....in the interest of making my life feel less like an IT admin of my own house....I think I'll just use the built in apps and keep my TV connected to the internet.
otikik 4 hours ago [-]
Stop buying LG
mastazi 4 hours ago [-]
I am afraid that my dumb TV, which I've been holding onto for many years, might be on its last leg.
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
qq66 3 hours ago [-]
If you don't ever give your network credentials to the Smart TV you've closed off 99% of the attack surface.
Tor3 3 hours ago [-]
From previous discussions there are apparently TVs which will connect to any open network nearby, if it can find one.
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.
worldofmatthew 2 hours ago [-]
Your smart TV would make you risk going to prison for theft? Just because its open does not mean permission to use.
kyriakos 3 hours ago [-]
Who runs open WiFi networks in 2026?
m132 3 hours ago [-]
Hopefully nobody, but still—it takes just one
permo-w 2 hours ago [-]
Japan is full of them
kyriakos 3 hours ago [-]
Don't connect your TV to the network. Use an external device for smart features like firestick, Apple tv, Google streamer etc (there are open source options too if you look around and don't mind missing some polish).
I have yet to receive a software update on any of my smart TVs that brought in any positive feature.
tikkabhuna 4 hours ago [-]
I share your disappointment. I just want a screen with a tuner. If I want any “apps”, I’ll pair it with another device which will probably be an Apple TV.
I’m starting to wonder if a monitor and a soundbar with an external tuner is possible.
crote 4 hours ago [-]
I don't even care about the tuner part. If I ever get the desire to watch linear TV again, I'll just get an IPTV subscription.
A decent-ish TV-sized panel with at least a single HDMI input really is all I need.
cynicalsecurity 3 hours ago [-]
You can easily turn dumb mode on any smart TV.
lifeisstillgood 2 minutes ago [-]
Wait - how? I thought the whole reason the darn things are lower cost than equivalent PC monitors is the smart mode tracks viewing habits and seeks that to data brokers?
JKCalhoun 39 minutes ago [-]
I helped a friend's mom set up a new TV she bought and was unable to get the TV to "come online" without 1) giving it network access and 2) setting up an account. Only then would the TV give access to the inputs.
awllau 4 hours ago [-]
What happens to the copies already installed?
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?
yodon 7 hours ago [-]
If other non-Android-based TV manufacturers follow, this will have a much bigger impact on the spread (and cost) of scraping than either Anubis or Cloudflare.
ifh-hn 5 hours ago [-]
My question is how would a user know their TV is being used like this?
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.
iso1631 4 hours ago [-]
Only reason LG doesn't have adverts is by forcing it to use a pihole, but even that needs updating -- recently they've managed to push things through and I need to do another investigation to see what needs blocking. Trouble is I only see them when I'm not in the mood to be working, and then forget about them
regexorcist 2 hours ago [-]
They hardcode DNS servers into the TV. You need a firewall in front of the pihole intercepting that traffic, I use OpenWrt.
akersten 8 hours ago [-]
is this some kind of tactical distraction from the other LG headlines this week?
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.
Marsymars 8 hours ago [-]
> 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.
ssl-3 8 hours ago [-]
That only applies to the subset of TVs that use Google TV/Android TV.
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.
ranger_danger 8 hours ago [-]
LG webOS is not Android though, it's from the old Palm/HP devices of the early 2010s. And I'm pretty sure there are still tons of play store apps with these proxy SDKs in them, advertised/consented or not.
glimshe 8 hours ago [-]
My TV doesn't know my router's wi-fi password.
declan_roberts 8 hours ago [-]
My TV thinks it's January 1st 1970.
kazinator 6 hours ago [-]
And so it thinks it is fairly new, then, and doesn't require any tubes replaced. Should that change, it will let you know.
charles_f 6 hours ago [-]
My TV isn't even connected to power
tclancy 3 hours ago [-]
Proper air gap, that.
mc3301 7 hours ago [-]
Every time anything asks for a DOB or anything like that, I enter the earliest date their system allows. Been doing it for decades.
I guess that might make me more trackable?
ahartmetz 7 hours ago [-]
At least you could get some interesting ads. Do you want to participate in a longevity study?
laughing_man 4 hours ago [-]
Heh. Steam thinks I'm 126.
walrus01 8 hours ago [-]
I've said it before on HN a long time ago but I'll repeat myself, I have about a thousand times more confidence that Sony and/or Microsoft will keep their PS5 and Xbox operating systems secure and not crapped up with stuff like this, than I do that random TV manufacturers will not result in a cybersecurity or privacy disaster.
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.
thewebguyd 6 hours ago [-]
The gaming consoles aren't subsidized via the data collection like smart TVs are via content recognition (selling everything on your screen to advertisers).
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.
amazingman 8 hours ago [-]
Hope you don't have any open WiFi networks nearby. IMO it's better to put it on one of your networks and isolate it from the internet and other devices.
tyre 8 hours ago [-]
Yes. I bought a Samsung TV and there isn’t a way to set up Art Mode without the internet. So first you have to get a raspberry pi, install pi hole, then switch your router’s DNS.
What a wild experience 2026 is. But I do feel like a wizard.
walrus01 7 hours ago [-]
You don't need an actual physical raspberry pi to temporarily run pihole on your LAN, you can, for instance, install a barebones debian VM inside any common hypervisor on your laptop like virtualbox or qemu, then install pihole on that basic debian x86-64 system.
7 hours ago [-]
entropie 7 hours ago [-]
They might hardcode DNS. It's not certain that this will work.
slau 7 hours ago [-]
This is why I’m a bit conflicted about DoH and ODoH. Firefox and Chrome have defaulted to DoH for years if I’m not mistaken (although I’m in Europe so I believe my FF still uses regular DNS instead of DoH by default).
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.
TeMPOraL 5 hours ago [-]
That's why I'm not a fan of DoH or certificate pinning. Those are tools of control.
tkel 7 hours ago [-]
I have my router set with iptables rules to block/redirect all port 53 and you can also add known DoH to a blocklist to try and force LAN devices to use your router DNS.
lodovic 5 hours ago [-]
I have a separate lan for untrusted devices, I only use whitelisting. No public DNS for these devices.
CyberDildonics 7 hours ago [-]
You can intercept normal DNS with iptables rules.
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.
drnick1 5 hours ago [-]
> Open up the back and disconnect the wifi antenna.
Upvoted. This is precisely the kind of thing I expect to read on HN.
Jnr 5 hours ago [-]
I block known DoH servers on my lan and forward all dns requests to my dns server.
drnick1 5 hours ago [-]
> So first you have to get a raspberry pi, install pi hole, then switch your router’s DNS.
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.
RiverCrochet 8 hours ago [-]
I haven't seen any open WiFi networks around me in years. I don't think it's a thing anymore; it's definitely not something a TV company can rely on.
baby_souffle 7 hours ago [-]
They're not unheard of in cities. Hotels and shopping malls have them. Some residential ISPs will also broadcast a public access point using a slice of each customer's bandwidth allocation...
When I had Comcast internet, I could get on those, but it required a network profile to actually connect to the internet. That said, I wouldn’t put it past TV makers and Comcast to collude on using this to allow backdoor network exfiltration.
prmoustache 5 hours ago [-]
They all have captive portal for regulatory reasons though.
Symbiote 4 hours ago [-]
Depends on the country.
The cafe I live above in Denmark just has an open network.
MrDrMcCoy 8 hours ago [-]
If it connects to another network, it's somebody else's problem. Unless of course, it has a built in webcam or microphone.
account42 26 minutes ago [-]
Its your problem if it updates itself to show ads (and of course exfiltrate whatever it can see / hear).
stvltvs 7 hours ago [-]
It does, at least for any media played through the device. Read up on automatic content recognition.
I have an open guest network with a captive portal, and not once have I seen my LG TV try to connect to it.
gboss 8 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure they can get internet through the HDMI cord from Roku or similar device
MrDrMcCoy 8 hours ago [-]
Source? HDMI includes Ethernet in the spec, but I've never heard of any devices actually implementing it.
RiverCrochet 8 hours ago [-]
That would require the Roku to specifically be set up to act as a router. You can't just connect to a random device that's not specifically a router/AP and use its internet connection.
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.
toast0 6 hours ago [-]
If this was a feature they wanted to provide, it would simplest to set the Roku up as a bridge. No dhcp, no nat, just a virtual switch. Roku devices run on Linux, if their HDMI chip supports Ethernet and that's plumbed to a Linux supported MAC (probably not), it might take an hour to build and test the feature. Longer if the wifi interface doesn't like being bridged (I've seen that on some openwrt devices).
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.
mikestew 7 hours ago [-]
This again? Yes, it’s in the spec. No, no one has been shown to have actually implemented it. No streaming box is going to allow random devices to use their connection.
toast0 6 hours ago [-]
E-Arc uses the wires intended for Ethernet. Hook your Roku up to an earc port if you're seriously concerned about it.
walrus01 7 hours ago [-]
does a roku provide a dhcp server, issue a dhcp lease, do NAT and routing to things that are plugged into it over the 100M ethernet built into a current gen HDMI link?
aussieguy1234 8 hours ago [-]
This is the best approach
ram_rattle 8 hours ago [-]
Apparently all these vendors did nothing to prevent this, a nice article from spur intelligence
Honestly I have nothing but anger for all parties involved here. We need to treat any appliance as hostile. Vote for people that will stop this stuff. Don't buy it. This is digital assault and should be treated as such.
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.
kh2engab 7 hours ago [-]
Is there a (technical) difference between a residential proxy and bot network node?
markasoftware 5 hours ago [-]
Residential proxies operated by "legitimate" providers can only open TCP connections, which more or less rules out DDoS attacks, which seem to be the most common use of botnets. (And all tcp connections typically have to go through the proxy providers datacenter first to get through NAT, which effectively limits the total amount of traffic/connections you can make)
account42 22 minutes ago [-]
TCP only does NOT rule out DDoS, it just limits it to a subset of potentially less effective methods. All DDoS means is that you get a bunch of machines hammering a system.
Nursie 7 hours ago [-]
A figleaf of "We gave ourselves permission on page 247, paragraph 3 of your user agreement"
charcircuit 4 hours ago [-]
As they are both distributed systems there will be some inherit underlying similarities, but a botnet has things like antidebug, stealth, privilege escalation, etc. They typically include attack payloads or spying features like taking screenshots, keyloggers and stealing account information. Additionally they may include further ways of spreading to other computers such as messaging people on Discord or using other vulnerabilities. They might also try and take exclusive control of the device by patching security vulnerabilities and uninstalling other malware. Well unless they sell dropper capabilities letting other people deploy malware to the machine.
4 hours ago [-]
0xblinq 7 hours ago [-]
I'm very worried with all this bullshit around TVs.
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.
orly01 6 hours ago [-]
I've heard you are not forced to connect to wifi, and on most of them you can connect make it default certain HDMI input. Latency to turn on/off might be less good than the 2010 one, but other than that this might be a very good way to do it.
geor9e 5 hours ago [-]
If you hook an Apple TV (or similar) up to any 4k TV, and turn CEC on (to let the Apple TV control it), and never set it up otherwise, it becomes a dumb monitor.
dzhiurgis 4 hours ago [-]
My parents got new telco IPTV boxes and they are excellent. Even voice search in our niche language works flawlessly.
Apple TV I got them few years ago just sits there unused.
dataengineer56 3 hours ago [-]
The new Chromecasts and Apple TVs are really pretty good. I connect my LG TV to the wifi every few months to run updates, then disconnect it after. I control my TV through the Chromecast remote, so I never see any LG dashboards/apps.
Fantosism 7 hours ago [-]
You buy a commercial panel used for advertising/signage that's 3x the price of the "Smart" consumer panels.
kaelwd 6 hours ago [-]
Are there even any OLED commercial panels with HDR and VRR?
thewebguyd 6 hours ago [-]
the smart consumer panels would also be more expensive if they weren't subsidized via the spyware.
jdmarble 7 hours ago [-]
If you’re fine with “okay” picture quality, try a Sceptre. You can get them on Amazon. I’ve had good success with them. I heard you can still disable some smart features on Sony TVs.
unethical_ban 4 hours ago [-]
My Sony tv has never connected to my network and it works great. I use an external device as the source.
Bud 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Utilera 3 hours ago [-]
I can imagine someone choosing "no ads" without realizing they just agreed to let strangers route traffic through their home IP indefinitely
iugtmkbdfil834 6 hours ago [-]
Heh. tinfoil hat on I always suspected that the AI gods would manifest themselves through TV. Hat stays on from this point on. It is not like LG suddenly found it in their heart to stop the money flow from the offending apps. Not when combined with recent security incident at frontier labs and current admin freaking out over open models.
miki123211 4 hours ago [-]
> researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG’s webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user’s TV.
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.
xacky 3 hours ago [-]
They should be banned from all app stores and added to anti virus definitions. Many smaller sites have already shutdown due to being DDOSed. Even Wikipedia gets attacked by them.
gblargg 5 hours ago [-]
So does this mean that using a proxy will cause all of the "smart" features to stop working? Win-win.
xena 8 hours ago [-]
This is the best news I've heard all week. Finally good news for once!
jbverschoor 5 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the heads up, LG.
Those cheap/discount tv brands make soo much sense these days
signalbright 3 hours ago [-]
It's absolutely crazy that they were accepted in the first place
BrenBarn 6 hours ago [-]
The messed up thing is that we need to rely on LG to stop allowing it rather than just making it illegal.
spudlyo 8 hours ago [-]
One day there will be a decent TV that can be relatively easily hacked to run on open source firmware. My wife and I are moving soon, and I'm happy we've decided not to have a TV in the new place. Neither of our current LG TV's have ever been connected to the network, but it will feel good when I sell or give the cursed things away.
4rt 8 hours ago [-]
lg's had a good run of being a monitor, their software was a bit shit but the hardware supported e-arc etc.
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.
BetterThanSober 5 hours ago [-]
Stop buying "smart" TV
JoshTriplett 5 hours ago [-]
I'd love to. Last I checked, nobody makes large-format high-quality tandem OLEDs that aren't smart TVs.
atoav 5 hours ago [-]
LG is on my blacklist. That means I won't buy LG products and in my job actively fight against buying products from them. And they put themselves onto that lost with their behavior.
is_true 9 minutes ago [-]
It's a shame because from the experience of people around me their appliances are some of the best, I mean for washing machines, fridges, etc.
jchw 8 hours ago [-]
None of my TVs are connected to the Internet. That said, I could really do with a better open source fullscreen UI, especially since I mainly just want a web browser that works good. I'm just using KDE Plasma with a custom daemon to control the TV power state over an HDMI CEC adapter plus an old K830 keyboard.
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.
account42 18 minutes ago [-]
Mind sharing what HDMI CEC adapter you use?
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.
saint_yossarian 7 hours ago [-]
K400+ user here, you might be interested in the upcoming Framework Wireless Touchpad Keyboard.
JoshTriplett 5 hours ago [-]
> integrated touchpad that you don’t hate.
> no mouse buttons
Failed at the first sentence.
charcircuit 6 hours ago [-]
>“The risk is amplified when consent comes from individuals within the household who use the device but shouldn’t give consent, such as minors.”
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.
symfoniq 8 hours ago [-]
This is madness.
Only LG themselves should be able to have this kind of invasive control over your television.
pixl97 8 hours ago [-]
I mean, why didn't they do that from the start?
steele 8 hours ago [-]
Honeypot for more logos
sourav276 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
aucisson_masque 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jocelyner 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
cognitiveinline 8 hours ago [-]
Sharing a slice of your internet in a privacy preserving way in exchange for something of value, seems fair, no?
account42 9 minutes ago [-]
We have this invention called money so that individuals don't need to wrangle complex swap trades and instead sell the things (usually their time) that they are OK with selling with informed consent and buy the things they want without having to give up things they don't want to or don't understand. If selling your internet connection was a reasonable thing to do there would be dedicated apps/boxes for that instead of this being packaged into random apps.
walrus01 8 hours ago [-]
Grey market residential proxy service providers are one of the most common methods of implementing bot spam, social media manipulation and plenty of straight-out fraud.
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.
cognitiveinline 7 hours ago [-]
You make a good point. I've reassessed and agree this is shady, and not a good pattern. And should be disabled/abolished.
hokumguru 8 hours ago [-]
I mean, some of us have legitimate business needs to get past cloudflares frankly somewhat bs gatekeeping business model, however
walrus01 8 hours ago [-]
Sure, I do as well, I have my own VPN into my home office that lets me run traffic outbound through its default gateway while I'm somewhere else. But letting random third parties I don't know run traffic through my house is another thing entirely.
mmakeev 2 hours ago [-]
Do you really need residential ip for this? for my news scraping i have choose static datacenter proxy first, rotating only as fallback, direct as last. flaresolverr covered cloudflare js challenge, but it wedge on memory time to time, so i add healthcheck for it. on my own site aws waf meet datacenter ua with captcha, so i understand other side too. residential never was necessary for me, but maybe my targets are just easier, what do you scrape?
nikanj 5 hours ago [-]
To be clear, bot spam and social media manipulation are legitimate business needs for the business selling said services.
JoshTriplett 5 hours ago [-]
You can't have legitimate business needs if you're not a legitimate business in the first place. Ban them all.
charcircuit 7 hours ago [-]
Just because others abuse privacy doesn't mean that we should remove privacy from everyone else. They also let you get around geoblocking.
nvme0n1p1 7 hours ago [-]
You're free to let strangers download illegal images from a proxy running on your IP, but I sure as hell won't.
charcircuit 6 hours ago [-]
If you don't want to share your internet with others, that is your choice, but please don't make seem like you are only sharing the internet with criminals. That is a harmful belief to spread.
ryandrake 8 hours ago [-]
Only if the app provides 1. prominently-displayed, informed consent, 2. an option to opt-out without losing app functionality, or 3. joining the botnet provides some kind of actual benefit to the user, besides just money to the developer.
account42 3 minutes ago [-]
There is really not good excuse to bundle this functionality with an unrelated app in the first place.
mirashii 8 hours ago [-]
Add to that list respecting the TOS of the user's ISP so that the user does not get banned, and providing some sort of remuneration if illicit activity through the proxy causes problems for the primary user, and then _maybe_ you could call this all not shady as fuck.
ryandrake 8 hours ago [-]
If only ISPs would actually crack down on (usually unwitting) users whose systems are participating in a malicious botnet or otherwise have their networks compromised. They could offer temporary disconnection + anti-malware support to get the user cleaned up, if they actually gave a shit.
walrus01 8 hours ago [-]
No residential last mile broadband ISP at the scale of hundreds of thousands or millions of customers is presently willing to spend the salary/benefits/fully loaded employee cost on the massive teams of (somewhat technically clued in, not low wage) people it would take to effectively implement this.
account42 2 minutes ago [-]
They would be willing if they were themselves held liable for the illicit activity originating from their network otherwise.
krackers 8 hours ago [-]
Apparently at least one of the apps mentioned does that. From the article
>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.
ryandrake 8 hours ago [-]
I wonder how informed the end user actually is, and if it's disclosed to them what kind of content might pass through their network as a result of agreeing.
charcircuit 7 hours ago [-]
Most traffic is normal scraping like checking amazon prices.
LoganDark 8 hours ago [-]
Some residential proxy providers offer a few cents for the use of your network.
cognitiveinline 8 hours ago [-]
No need of (2) and (3) - the user can choose to not install/use the app. (1) is the right fair boundary.
ryandrake 8 hours ago [-]
Those apps just shouldn't exist.
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?"
Dylan16807 7 hours ago [-]
Sometimes it's botnet, sometimes it's just accessing netflix without hitting big IP range bans.
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.
NopIdoN 8 hours ago [-]
"train our machine to identify traffic lights" or something
oasisbob 7 hours ago [-]
No.
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.
Dylan16807 7 hours ago [-]
On the other hand if you want to resell 2% of your bandwidth the ISP shouldn't have any say in that.
ButlerianJihad 6 hours ago [-]
Oh yes they can. If I'm a consumer, I pay for my connection that is sold to me and held in my name. I have no right to "resell" or "sublet" part of that. It is usually spelled out in the Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy.
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!
Dylan16807 5 hours ago [-]
> At the very least, consumer connections explicitly disallow "Commercial Use".
And that's really bad! Far more than reselling, you should very much be able to run a website from home!
ButlerianJihad 5 hours ago [-]
> And that's really bad!
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.
TeMPOraL 4 hours ago [-]
What if I don't want to run a business? I just want to run a website!
nullsanity 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
boredatoms 7 hours ago [-]
Tell your relatives, buy an apple tv
amlib 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think apple makes actual tvs
boredatoms 7 hours ago [-]
Whats your point exactly? Are you purposely being obtuse?
Plenty of uninformed people let their tv on the network, they shouldn’t. A separate box should instead. Tell me I'm wrong?
mDyJzDPmBdG 2 hours ago [-]
You are wrong. Just idea of having to use to remotes is unacceptable level of friction to most people. We should not hail separate device as excuse to allow this shitty behaviour by TV manufacturers.
I guess the lawmakers won't move a finger and we have wait for consumer network equipment manufacturers[1] to advertise build in pi-hole and ACR/TV ads blocking on firewall level.
[1] Let's just forget for a second they are famous for low quality software full of security bugs
Rendered at 11:21:04 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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 won't change unless governments create and enforce laws.
A lack of enforcement actions has caused situations like this.
Why would LG do better when it's cheaper to not?
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.
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 is for a fucking TV.
Very unfortunate.
Glad my 2007 Sony Bravia still works, even if only standard HD.
LG's behavior isn't fine, but their monitors don't install crapware on Linux.
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...
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.
So something most desktop Linux users don't do.
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
https://rustup.rs/
Increasingly 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
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.
Let's not diminish LG's part in all this.
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.
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.
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.
Why not? Microsoft isn't a struggling startup. They can afford to do just that.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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
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.
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.
Admittedly this doesn't stop the presumed screenshotting and microphone use and worse
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.
* https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/
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.
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.
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.
Another device might not give the free reign for all shitty malware like they do. Apple TV for one wouldn't.
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.
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.
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.
We don't need treats this badly.
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.
[1] https://github.com/spocky/miproja1
[2] https://github.com/mlm-games/flicky
https://www.webosbrew.org/rooting/
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1v1pkbs/lg_sp... ← examples of others who ran into the same shit
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 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.
I have yet to receive a software update on any of my smart TVs that brought in any positive feature.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I guess that might make me more trackable?
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.
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.
https://www.howtogeek.com/its-not-just-streaming-content-you...
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.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/video/how-smart-tvs-may-be-s...
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.
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.
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.
Those cheap/discount tv brands make soo much sense these days
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.
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.
> no mouse buttons
Failed at the first sentence.
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.
Only LG themselves should be able to have this kind of invasive control over your television.
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.
>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.
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.
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