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Your Smart TV May Be Crawling the Web for AI (theverge.com) 42

Posted by msmash from the super-multitasker dept.
Bright Data, a company that operates one of the world's largest residential proxy networks, has been running an SDK inside smart TV apps that turns those devices into nodes for web crawling -- collecting data used by AI companies, among other clients -- and most consumers have had no idea it was happening.

The company has published more than 200 first-party apps to LG's app store alone and still lists Samsung's Tizen OS and LG's webOS as supported platforms, though LG says the SDK is "not officially supported" and its operation on webOS "is not guaranteed." Google, Amazon, and Roku have all since adopted policies restricting or banning background proxy SDKs, and Bright Data no longer supports those platforms.

Several Roku apps still running the SDK disappeared from the store after a journalist with The Verge behind this reporting contacted the company.
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Your Smart TV May Be Crawling the Web for AI

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  • Fucking LG (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday February 27, 2026 @10:50AM (#66013604) Homepage Journal

    Good thing I've never connected my LG TV to a network.

    Sucks that I have this malicious turd squatting in my home just waiting to betray me if anyone ever plugs a network cable into it.

    • Of course, that's only if the TV is new enough to get an update that installs that function.
      Your phone can't get the update that breaks everything if it isn't new enough, can it?

      • Of course, that's only if the TV is new enough to get an update that installs that function.

        It might be old enough now not to, since I bought it 7/2024, but I wouldn't bet on it.

        Your phone can't get the update that breaks everything if it isn't new enough, can it?

        Depends, is it an OS update, or a Play services update? If the former no, if the latter yes...

    • You think they aren't motivated to crack some wifi passwords while the "unconnected" TV is idling?

      • You think they aren't motivated to crack some wifi passwords while the "unconnected" TV is idling?

        That kind of activity would be detected by someone.

  • The last time I had a TV connected to the Internet was 2010. Today I just use a Linux box, a file manager and a network share with all my torrented content. I can even get HDR.

    https://battlepenguin.com/tech... [battlepenguin.com]

    I remember that ancient story about someone discovering how Samsungs were transmitting a lot of audio data constantly when they shouldn't. It's literally the Telescreen from 1984. Stop connecting things you don't have admin rights on to the Internet!

    • Re:Stop connecting the Internet of Trash (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Friday February 27, 2026 @10:54AM (#66013620)

      Problem is that at some point they are just going to include cellular modem in there and phone home. Getting an IoT package from Vodafone Global and an eSIM costs peanuts. After that happens, you basically need to open the chassis and try to find where the antenna is and disconnect it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Calydor ( 739835 )

        And it's going to be clamshelled somewhere that'll break the entire TV if you so much as think of going near it. And if you DO manage to disconnect it without breaking the TV the TV will just not receive a confirmation packet when turning on and default to a "Something is very seriously wrong! Take your TV to a repair shop IMMEDIATELY!" screen with no access to being used as, y'know, a TV.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        The purpose of 5G was to support the 20-30 BILLION IoT devices out there. (Forcing you to buy a new phone was just an added benefit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Problem is that at some point they are just going to include cellular modem in there and phone home. Getting an IoT package from Vodafone Global and an eSIM costs peanuts. After that happens, you basically need to open the chassis and try to find where the antenna is and disconnect it.

        You should know 5G was made for this as well - there is a low speed profile meant for IoT type usage. It needs support by the carrier which is why it isn't supported in North America yet (using 5G). IoT devices are limited to

  • Are TVs even necessary? (Score:3)

    by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Friday February 27, 2026 @10:55AM (#66013622)
    I just do streaming these days: a large monitor connected to my PC seems to be able to do everything I want.

    • I use a LG TV as a monitor because it was by far the cheapest way to get this much screen real estate (42.5" in this case.)

      I also just do streaming, and I've never connected it to a network, but it remains a TV.

      The TVs are partly subsidized by crapware, so it's reasonable to expect them to remain cheaper than monitors.

      • Same. Buy a Wyse 7050 off ebay and you have a cheap fanless thin client for running linux. It has no problems streaming through a browser at 4k and does x265 hardware decoding with vlc. You'll only need a displayport to hdmi adapter cable.

        • I have two Zen3 PCs hooked up to it, one with 5900X and one with 5850U. In the living room there's just a HiSense Google TV for WAF reasons. It's slightly irritating but also does everything properly including SmartTube, and the ad load is light, plus it never spends much time at the launcher anyway.

      • Spectre offers 55 and 77 inch screens that are dumb panels but have all the bells and whistles of newer panels (hdr, interpolation, etc). The 55in was $200 when I got it, the 77in was stupid dumb, like $450

    • Nothing stopping them from embedding the SDK in PC apps too.

  • Not "mine" because I never had one and never will.

    Yeah, I know I can just not connect it to the web. But firstly, I don't want to encourage bad behaviour.

    Secondly, given that it's almost impossible to buy a new car that doesn't phone home constantly, how long do you think it will be before smart TVs also have their own cell modems and SIMs and don't need no steenkin' WiFi connection to rat you out and serve you ads?

    • If it uses a SIM card, pull the SIM and no more phoning home... use your phone for GPS (if you even really need it).
      Pulling the sim might disable some stuff, but the core functionality _should_ still be there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Teun ( 17872 )
        Uh yeah, good luck pulling an eSIM.

        • A little carefully targeted heatgun work will take care of the cell modem part... the big question is: if they built the cell modem (eSim) in, how deeply is it baked into the OS? Will it turn on and work as a basic TV, will the streaming stuff work (WiFi) without the eSim modem? If you can't remove it (for some reason), figure out where the antenna for the eSim modem is and maybe a Faraday cage would take care of the modem while leaving the WiFi alone.
          Of course, your mileage may vary.

          • A little carefully targeted heatgun work will take care of the cell modem part... the big question is: if they built the cell modem (eSim) in, how deeply is it baked into the OS? Will it turn on and work as a basic TV, will the streaming stuff work (WiFi) without the eSim modem? If you can't remove it (for some reason), figure out where the antenna for the eSim modem is and maybe a Faraday cage would take care of the modem while leaving the WiFi alone. Of course, your mileage may vary.

            Even if disabling the "phone home" capability will work on current TVs, I suspect that won't be the case for near-future product releases. If the set can't contact the mothership within a specified number of days, it will probably have its functionality limited and/or have nag text overlaying everything you try to watch.

  • Google noticed suspicious traffic from your IP (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dknj ( 441802 ) on Friday February 27, 2026 @11:06AM (#66013652) Journal

    Got this message for months and could not figure out what it was. Ended up fully power cycling an LG tv and the suspicious traffic went away. Child launched an app and the traffic came back. LG allows backgrounding apps but they get evicted quite easily due to limited resources. Well the app was a 4MB app that used so little resources it never got evicted. Now I see this post and it just furthers the point, do not connect devices to your network you do not trust. In my case I thought I was safe because it was on its own locked down VLAN, but nope. Now they are all going through proxies

  • If you connect your TV to the internet, you are an idiot. Being a part of a bot farm is the least of your worries here. The only connections TVs should get is HDMI and power.

    • If you connect your TV to the internet, you are an idiot.

      That's a pretty high horse you're on there.

      • Its not. Most people want the TV connected to the internet because they too dumb and cheap to get an independent streamer (AppleTV etc). If you don't like Apple, too bad because it's probably the best option to consuming streaming on a TV with less privacy concerns. You also can't stream to the TV from phone/tablet unless TV is connected to local WiFi.

        • Most people want the TV connected to the internet because they too dumb...

          I see you're riding the same horse.

  • My stupid tv turns on and off at will because its not designed for anything else including gathering info for 3rd parties.

  • "Residential Proxies" are the new Crypto Miners (Score:4)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Friday February 27, 2026 @11:48AM (#66013728)
    Run by the same sort of people, by the same sort of destroy the world for profit mindset. All this shit needs to be filtered by proper firewalls and antivirus. The fact that Apple and Microsoft have ramped up their anti malware effectiveness means less protected platforms like TV and IOT are being targeted. I've heard that pedophiles use residential proxies to post their vile content online evading traditional blacklists. We now need anti virus for servers and Linux thanks to proxy malware.

    Cyber security is getting worse due to these networks, AI companies will need to be held accountable for the origin of their training data as it is all in a black box while legitimate human written content is required to have proper citations in any respectable work.

  • Class-action lawsuit time (Score:3)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Friday February 27, 2026 @11:53AM (#66013740) Homepage

    A class-action lawsuit and possibly criminal charges are the only things that will shut these fuckers down. Using your device as a proxy without your knowledge or consent surely qualifies as computer crime.

  • Everyone that manages to slip another microprocessor into your home is looking for the next way to rip you off. To steal your personal data, internet bandwidth, electricity, or money.

  • Could someone with an affected TV and the patience to read all that shit look at the legal terms to see if this is one of those inadvertent things you accepted when you clicked-through the license?

    (My TV is probably too old to host that crap, and besides I don't connect it to the Internet. My streaming comes through an Apple TV. At least I -know- who's monitoring my TV usage.)

  • All my smart TVs never seen the internet. They're completely offline, I just feed them video and audio via HDMI.

  • I was going to have a low-key weekend but now I've got to put my Throwing Start LAN Tap to use and see what's flowing in and out of my TV...

  • Don't tell me it means Software Development Kit ... or does it?

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