Its an old LG, but given the recent light on the lengths they’ll go to spy on us, I figured this guy was better off without any ability to even connect wirelessly. Don’t know if the Ethernet still works but I plan on keeping my TVs as dumb as possible, HDMI only.
If you’re wondering how to open lg TVs you just have to remove all the screws then start pulling open at the bottom and open the clips going up. With the TV face down on a soft surface just keep pulling on the back case from the bottom, it’ll take some effort to pop open. The top edge folds open more like a hidge than clips.
LG: “Diplomatic immunity!”
Anyone with a screwdriver: " It’s been revoked!"
Just replace the word SMART with SPY and it makes a lot more sense. TVs in particular are one of the few things that have gotten cheaper over time and this is only because of the Automatic Content Recognition systems and the advertising.
Why not just… you know, don’t give it your wifi password.
Hopefully you don’t live near any neighbors or open hotspots.
But then how will I amuse myself getting in screaming matches with the remote
What of it connects to some other TV or device?
Fuckin tire pressure monitor system surveillance all over again
Wait, what’s that about?
So you don’t stream at all? Because if you do, they just get you through the streaming device. I mean maybe it’s firestick instead of LG, but someone’s doing it.
I worry a little less what the streaming company is going to do with my streaming data than I do the TV company harvesting data on how loud I pee in the middle of the night
YESSSSSS!
I wonder how much a TV would be if it wasn’t subsidized with the data collection revenue? I remember someone offering a TV free of charge but it had a hardware ad bar mounted to the bottom. I paid $1000 for my 65" S90C when S90Ds were already on sale.
I’d take that free TV. I know how to break displays precisely.
I had only seen one YouTube video talking about the device. WiFi nowadays tracks your every move, everything you do around your house. Now television: I’m shocked. Nowadays, every digital device we use is constantly tracking us and selling our data to big companies…
It’s sad to think that we’re always being watched by all these electronic devices.
What can the TV do if you simply… never connect it to WiFi?
Serious question, but these don’t have cellular or LoRa modems. Neither can they use Bluetooth w/o an app to use a phone as a router?
They can connect to neighboring LG TVs and open WiFi networks in your area without explicit approval from you. I don’t know about LG in particular, but there have definetly been TVs that do that.
Yeesh! Creative
Creative writing, real nonsense.
Yeah, I’m not even that creative and I’d have them talk to printers with open wifis at least. I’m sure someone smarter and eviler than me has devoted real brain power to this
I’ve seen a lot of isps broadcast open wifi from their routers.
Most open Wi-Fi I come across have a “enter your email here. For Free WiFi” form. I assume they could get past this with a simple script but open WiFi is not the same as having the WiFi password.
wE oWn ThE gLAsS
I just can’t imagine a jury trial where the TV I bought, have the receipt and possession of, has had its “rights” violated.
Cory Doctorow has imagined it for us:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41085118-unauthorized-bread
I’ll add it to my list!
I sometimes dream of cutting the connections to my microwave’s beeper. “Yes, I know it is done. Shut up. I’m on the toilet.”
I did that with mine immediately after getting it out of the box. Just desoldered the piezo speaker. It’s glorious. People ask “how do you know when it’s done?” Well, it just doesn’t go BRRRR anymore.
Meanwhile, I’m sacrificing my privacy because the push notification to my phone reminds me I gotta get off the toilet cuz there’s food cooking.
Lotta microwaves have a setting to disable the beep. I did that with mine
This is Plan B when you already have an LG product.
Plan A is to not buy LG anything, ever.
PS: Just out of curiosity and based on other people pointing out here and in another post of mine how hard is to get a non-smart TV, I looked around and here is the largest non-smart consumer TV I could find (which is 1080p and 40" from what looks like a Spanish manufacturer, for €209 with VAT), here is a non-smart 65" 4K Samsung hospitality display ($1023 in the US) and here is what looks like the same spec consumer TV from Samsung ($379.99 in the US).
So, sorry, it is in fact possible to not just avoid LG products (which itself would be easy, just buy any other brand out there) but even smart TVs altogether, just either pay more (over 2x as more judging by that Samsung TV) or settle for smaller 1080p TVs from smaller TV makers.
Basically everything Sceptre makes — and indeed possibly literally everything — outside of their Android TV line is a dumb TV. They’re carried by Walmart although inevitably not in store, and they’re reasonably cheap.
I wish I could find their European equivalent …
They all do this. Why do you think displays are so cheap? The business plan is not the display, it’s the data.
Here is a Samsung 65" 4K Non-Smart Hospitality Display in the US and here is the closest consumer Samsung TV also in the US.
The former is $1,023.00, the latter is $379.99.
HOWEVER, here is the Samsung commercial smart version of the first TV model.
Notice that it’s actually a bit more expensive at $1080.
Also judging by figures I heard years ago for the cost to buy private information about people (well below $1 per person if I remember it correctly), I suspect Smart TV makers don’t make all that much money from selling private information (especially if you consider that they’re competing with the likes of Google as well as many other companies that also have massive surveillance operations) as a percentage of the total price of the TV.
I suspect that the difference in price between commercial and consumer TVs is mainly due to higher resilience in the device’s design, longer and/or stricter warranties and support availability plus that they simply can extract more money from business customers (an effect you see in A LOT of things, not just this).
I suspect the current situation where non-smart consumer TVs are pretty much non-existent are a mix of big companies pursuing even small increases in profit (from selling private data) so they all inevitably end up doing that same thing that brings them a small additional revenue stream and consumers themselves being convinced that “smart” is a good thing on a TV and actually preferring those over non-smart TVs.
Certainly consumers favoring “smart” TVs would explain why even little no-brand Chinese TV manufacturers who really don’t have the scale and systems for mass-surveillance are selling Smart TVs rather than non-Smart ones outside the cheapest possible TV sizes (you can find monitor-size non-smart TVs)
Every smart TV brand is doing this. There is no escape
Don’t get a smart TV, just use an external media player for the “smarts” - easiest is to put LibreELEC in a Pi and get a remoted like this.
Personally last TV I got (5 years ago) I went for something that did not advertise any “smarts” (a Blaupunkt which turned out to have some “smarts” so it has always been disconnected), though if it was nowadays I would probably spend the extra to get a commercial display - a commercial display is not only “smarts” free, it is also designed to last a long time under constant use rather than with built-in obsolescence like consumer products, so it should not need to be replaced for a long time.
I’m lucky that I’ve been an really early adopter of media players (well before Android TV) and quickly figure out that the life-cycle of medial players (i.e. the “smarts” in Smart TVs) is way shorter than the life-cycle of the actual display, mainly because of how often new codecs become widespread (video decoding of 1080p or higher content is only performant if done in hardware or it you throw a ton of general computing power at it), so it’s economically wiser to have those things separate since you’ll replaced the media player hardware much more often than display hardware, all of which is even more so when software updates of closed “smarts” solutions can literally make the device unusable simply by using too much memory, a common built-in obsolescence trick.
PS: I had a look around and above 40" 1080p the only non-smart TVs I found were indeed commercial things like “hospitality displays” and judging by example I checked from Samsung with the same spec, the explicitly “non-smart” “hospitality display” (65", 4K) was a bit over 2x the price of the “smart” consumer version.
So yeah, it’s feasible to avoid smart TVs by going commercial (but costs over 2x) or be limited to the smaller sizes and resolutions, as well as simpler tech of small brands in the low-end of the consumer TV market.
Even commercial displays are scraping data.
Now comes the fun part. Do you know of any good quality “dumb” 4K OLED in the 65” range?
Why would I ever buy a 65" 4K OLED?!
At the optimal viewing distance for a 65" TV (about 2.68m) I already can’t see the pixels of a 1080p screen.
Maybe it would make sense if I had 20/10 vision, but I don’t have such above average vision since I was a kid.
Reason guides my purchase of consumer devices, not hype.
Different strokes. I sit about 9-10 feet from my TV and I can definitely see a difference between 1080p and 4K content. You don’t have to see individual pixels but you can tell there’s a sharpnesss and complexity difference to the images. Not to mention I have yet to see a 1080p HDR screen and i watch content that is Dolby Vision and HDR10+ and you definitely can see a big difference there from SDR content.
So my question still stands, no hype around it.
Don’t take this too badly, but “you can tell there’s a sharpnesss and complexity difference to the images” sounds a lot like the “gold connector digital cables sound better” thing - people subjectivelly perceiving something which they think reflects quality because of expecting it to be better, rather than because it’s actually better (audiophile forums are sometimes hilarious).
Other possibilities are simply that you’re seeing upsized 1080p content on that 4K screen and are confusing upsizer artifacts for actual quality differences (or vice-versa for seing downsized 4K content on a 1080p screen).
Yet other reasons are simply different screen brightness range, dynamic response or refresh rates - for example an OLED panel will general be better in most/all of these than TFT and more expensive TVs (which the 4K ones are) generally come with the former.
There is definitelly a difference between HDR and SDR if you’re watching content with the appropriate color range (an HDR screen can literally display more color information, plus SDR stuff is mapped to a gamma curve to “compress” it whilst HDR is not) and most people can definitelly see it, but the difference between 1080p and 4K is only perceived for certain up-close distances and/or if you have above average eyesight.
I would suggest a blind test at a TV store were you just try and guess which is better without knowing which TVs are 1080p and 4K, but you still have to account for display tech since as I wrote OLEDs generally look better.
And it still doesn’t answer my question. Show me where I can get a dumb 65” OLED capable of HDR. You’ve gone way off of a tangent on something I don’t need convincing of.
some of us are really into home theater. i once had a 75 inch screen. it was FUN. took up half the room. my current 55 inch 1080p is enough screen tho. i want a projector next
Well, ultimatelly it’s a “how much do I care about being surveilled in the comfort of my own home and risk having my network hacked” vs “how much enjoyment do I derive from a a big fat consumer TV”.
Personally “how much enjoyment do I derive from a a big fat consumer TV” is such a low value for me that most other things are more important for me, but I can understand that it’s not the same for others.
i’m just worried they venture into smart projectors next. i just want to paint my wall theater silver and not have to worry about screen resolutions.
THIS is also not a solution. It is not just LG that does this, they all do.
Are there any companies that don’t pull shit like this?
None. Ads pay for part of the TV.
In the future I will only buy a tv that has a known method of wifi removal. Like this one for example: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/LG+TV+49SJ8000+-+WiFi+module+disassembly/117783
I knew a guy years back that would pop open any device with an internet or GPS connection and physically disable it. He was telling us about it at work one day. Most of our coworkers told him it was paranoid overkill. I bet that dude is laughing his ass off right now.
It’s not paranoia if you’re right.
"The issue’s not whether you’re paranoid, Lenny. I mean, look at this shit. The issue is whether you’re paranoid enough."
The other day I saw an old comedy and the “crazy” guy was saying that he doesn’t use cellphones (which were new at the time) because the CIA can listen to it.
In the early days of analog cell phones, any teenage punk with access to a Radio Shack and a modicum of soldering skills could listen to your conversations on the things, never mind the CIA.
I could be wrong but I think up to 2G it was basically unencrypted no?
Just like the old people keeping nonsensical passwords all different and written down, when all the database breaches happened.
Me being paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after me.
Nope. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.
Its only paranoia if theyre not out to get you. Otherwise its sparkling anxiety
Regarding the specific reason why they are after you. In general you could still be paranoid.
Paranoid guys don’t laugh. They switch to being paranoid that them being a blindspot will draw attention.
Source: Am that guy.
yup. you gotta keep some nonsense, average data about yourself going (google thinks i’m a radiological oncologist, and i’m a musician. that’s kind of funny and kind of sad) and have your paranoid conversations out in the woods
A friend of mine’s household got a smart tv with speech commands. They didn’t really understand why I didn’t like. The kicker? They’re also somewhat paranoid about government and corporate overreach, but not to the extent that they’ll do anything.
Do you have a phone? Does it have a hard cutoff for the GPS and mic?
Edit: damn! Y’all are sensitive about your larping.
C’mon, it’s common sense that you should not take your phone on demos and the like.
Oh, I didn’t realize that “going to a friend’s house” was code for “full black ops shit”. If that’s the case, yeah I’d be pretty pissed too if I went over and everyone left their cells behind and the Wi-Fi was turned off and we went into the dampening room and there was a smart TV playing South Park hanging on the wall.
I didn’t pick up that was what was happening at all. Thank you for the heads up.
They can track it with the antennas right? Less accurate but no need for more.
Also public wifi, ever connected to a major provider of public access? They know who you are now, and they can log the connection attempts your phone ‘helpfully’ makes for you.
Within 150 - 1,500 feet at absolute best (high density urban environments) and up to a couple of miles out in the sticks. Very different than within a few feet for GPS.
You’re right though, if you want to go completely out of sight, you need a physical disconnect for the cell antenna too, or the battery.
I’m just saying that if you’re worried about your TV listening, you might want to think about the hot mic attached to a pinpoint tracker that you keep in your pocket.
I don’t speak freely near my phone and I have the bare minimum of 1st party apps in it. I was trying to get my PinePhone working, but that didn’t pan out.
Smart. I wish there were options to the spyphones.
It’s really strange though that your friends would be security conscious enough that y’all keep your phones locked away when hanging out, but not conscious enough to opt out of buying the spy TV. I guess with so many attack vectors it’s easy to focus on a few, and forget about the others. Giving us a false sense of security. I’m sure that’s by design.
If they really wanted to, they could determine your travel history using the accelerometer.
Those little accelerometers have drift. It might work for a few miles, but eventually it’s going to be off by a significant margin. Plus, if the entity tracking you has your accelerometer history, you’re already pretty fucked, regardless if they can track it or not.
You can’t hide from an all-seeing entity. You can only appear too insignificant to hold it’s attention.
It’s still paranoid overkill no? They just want to sell him useless shit lmao
Or is he a black panther on the low?
It literally takes screenshots of what you’re watching (this was known for a while) and listens to your conversations in standby.
The question is - are you happy to keep your door open, invite a stranger to stand in your room whilst you go about your day? If not, why do we allow electronics to do the same?
The concern then is this data is sold and used against you by insurance and so on.
This isn’t a conspiracy, this does happen.I’m happy to have caterers trying to appease my whims. But again, I’m not a criminal, and I am self aware enough to understand that nobody cares about a wage slave to actually be listening in like in your false equivalence of someone standing in my room.
Edit to add : And that’s all pointless opinions because it’s happening either way. Unless we decide to live Amishly.
You are right, it is a false equivalence, the stranger standing there isn’t automatically processing, tagging, then sending off the data to thousands of customers so those customers can increase your prices for things they know you’ll buy anyways, use the data to flood your algorithmic feeds with something that will actually sway your opinions their way… But yeah… You have nothing to hide right?
If they increase their prices they will lose to their competitors? You take all the stuff that supports your argument and just ignore everything else that exists?
They can sway an opinion with or without tracking people, you seem to be taking away peoples autonomy on this point.
You folks aren’t special enough to be this paranoid about targeted ads. That’s what it is, your choice is to give up and live an Amish lifestyle.
And they did a fine job of swaying your opinions for 1000s of years with whatever tech was available at the time. Didn’t they?
If they increase their prices they will lose to their competitors?
What competitors? Shopping is nearly an effective monopoly. People just don’t go elsewhere to check for better prices anymore, amazon is too convenient.
They can sway an opinion with or without tracking people, you seem to be taking away peoples autonomy on this point.
And you seem to be ignoring how predictable the human brain is. There are reasons people consider all these algorithms to be evil, they take advantage of emotional weaknesses to influence people to do things they normally wouldn’t have. Saying it has always been that way doesn’t make this more effective way any less of a problem. With all this personal information being harvested, these companies can ramp up the manipulation and sell it to the highest bidder. That information is something worth hiding so you can still interact with the world and be targeted a bit less.
You folks aren’t special enough to be this paranoid about targeted ads
You dont need to be special lol. They are targeting everyone all at once. I really suggest to read into the situation a bit more as you seem to underestimate the scope of this issue.
Competitors still exist chief, it is not an effective monopoly yet. Though I agree they are always pushing that way. What do you think Ali baba is?
Again, targeted ads aren’t scary to some of us. Idk what to tell you.
You think because I’m not paranoid about a data set that says when I like to buy toilet paper I am not well read on the matter, I’m sorry you feel that way.
Why don’t we pivot and just agree that the flock cameras are exactly what you’re afraid of, but in the hands of local peasant cops who actually want to harass people and should be banned.
deleted by creator
Your coworkers still thinks he’s paranoid, because they’ve nothing to hide and therefore don’t care.
I apparently read this differently from y’all.
A disturbingly large percentage of the populace does see it this way.
I read it as a sarcastic criticism of such people. Was it not?
I read it as a sarcastic criticism of such people. Was it not?
It absolutely was meant sarcastically, I fucking hate the “hurr durr I’ve got nothing to hide so why should i care”
But I can see how people can misinterpret my comment.
“Give me the man and I will give you the case against him” is a quote you might want to look into the history of.
My comment was sarcasm, but I can see how people can misinterpret it.
i really want to know if using chromecast (separate tracking issue i know), disables LGTV tracking ? Cause the tv isnt connected to the internet chromecast is.
You haven’t connected it to the internet, but:
- It’s still recording, waiting for the day it gets a connection.
- It’s looking for it’s own way to make a connection.
Aren’t our other devices like firesticks listening too? The firestick and Apple TV remotes have microphones too, right?
Ok, but, how big would the file size be for the recordings? I doubt tv manufacturers would ship tvs with insane amounts of storage just so they can keep recordings.
It can (does!) run speech to text locally. All of The Lord of the Rings has 481,103 words. That’s about 2.8 MB.
As long as they don’t manage to buy bandwidth on Amazon sidewalk, Comcast, or something stupid like that, you’re probably *fine. And I can’t see them paying third parties to ship the data off an unidentified tv’s.
TBH, I suspect the sending you all dictation off the TV was a really shitty accident. They were probably trying to build an Alexa-like service and left debug on. The fallout from this, the eventual court cases, the brand trust erosion, none of that is worth the model data, they’re getting.
It’s extremely likely that a STB or streaming device will keep your data out of the hands of LG.
Now you have to be concerned with that Google is doing with it :)
*edit
Imagine the power to use any TV in any home as a spy device, and remote hack it. Because I’m sure that won’t be abused. It’s probably fine. We shouldn’t worry about it. Plus the whole ownership, we own nothing, they claim they still own the glass, on top of the copyright ownership of the software. That’s pretty all encompassing. That means you’re essentially renting your TV. It’s a push for reducing and eroding consumer rights. So we own nothing.
If you’re using a seperate Chromecast stick in the HDMI port, then yes, LG’s tracking will be disabled if the TV itself has no internet connection.
I would still be extremely wary; HDMI as a spec has the ability to carry Ethernet data.
I wouldn’t put it past the manufacturers from giving it a couple of years for this news cycle to pass from user memory, before trying more nefarious methods to try and exfiltrate data by piggybacking through connected devices like a Chromecast.
That’s mostly because I don’t trust Google to not help facilitate that for a share of the profits and access to the data for AI training.
playstation to sound system to [smarter than i’d like] tv.
i don’t know how much data gets stripped out at the sound system, but i know they started making older sound formats stop working through the optical audio channel for “reasons” (probably to do with tracking) and we had to switch to HDMI. do not get me started.
The receiver takes the audio signal from the Playstation to push it to the speakers then sends the rest to the TV. Make sure the TV is not connected to the internet.
I wonder if if I bombarded LG with strange data, like watching nothing but ytps on loop for hours, or a loop of a scarry face, not a political stance just a scary face. Probobly nothing but I wonder.
I wonder if they properly sanitize their database’s input…
I’ve wondered alot about that. If we gave them data… But really bad data… Would it work? Kinda like that browser plug-ins that make it look like you vist every site under the sun to make your actual data obscured.
If these companies are as lazy as I think they are, then they probobly don’t scrub the data because they don’t understand what’s junk vs real. Much like the cat in the hat trend going around.
that’s not sanitized though. that’s actual usage.
