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.

  • Doom@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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.

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      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.

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        The most conspiratorially minded are also the most likely to miss the obvious.

        During COVID lockdowns, while I worked retail, a few customers didn’t want to use the QR codes to “check in” to the store because “tracking”, but then used digital contactless payment without a thought.

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        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.

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            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.

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            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.

            • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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              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.

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                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.

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            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.

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              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.

      • jrTug_2T@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        "The issue’s not whether you’re paranoid, Lenny. I mean, look at this shit. The issue is whether you’re paranoid enough."

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      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.

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      Just like the old people keeping nonsensical passwords all different and written down, when all the database breaches happened.

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      Paranoid guys don’t laugh. They switch to being paranoid that them being a blindspot will draw attention.

      Source: Am that guy.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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        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

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      You can’t hide from an all-seeing entity. You can only appear too insignificant to hold it’s attention.

    • urthoughtsrbad@lemmy.zip
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      It’s still paranoid overkill no? They just want to sell him useless shit lmao

      Or is he a black panther on the low?

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        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.

        • urthoughtsrbad@lemmy.zip
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          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.

          • Zeoic@lemmy.world
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            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?

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              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?

              • Zeoic@lemmy.world
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                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.

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                  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.

    • Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk
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      Your coworkers still thinks he’s paranoid, because they’ve nothing to hide and therefore don’t care.

      • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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        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?

        • Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk
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          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.

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      Psssshhhh!!! Get a load of THIS guy! Thinking he owns something just because he pays his own money to buy it…

      • postcapitalism@lemmy.today
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        According the terms of service his payment is for the use of the device according to manufacturer stated use-cases and any misuse or changes to the components negates the right to use and opens him to civil liability /s

        (?)

        • we live in the evil Harambe timeline

        • veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world
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          I’m so glad they are going after companies like Playstation over the use of “purchase” and “buy”. These companies have perverted this term, even Steam is no exception.

          If they win this against digital goods, it goes towards the goal of fleshing out a minimum expectation of these terms. And companies can’t weasel out of their anti-consumer practices without clearly revealing to the the layman how evil they have become.

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      It is far worse LG “owns glass”, he is luckly he didn’t touch it if he did he could be sued for damages

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    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.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      They all do this. Why do you think displays are so cheap? The business plan is not the display, it’s the data.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        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)

        • JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net
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          Well, considering LG’s advertisement data selling makes more money than actually selling TVs with 0 hardware production costs… (According to the GN investigation)

          There is a reason that every single company, cars, IoT, fucking washing machines are all moving into the data harvesting and selling business…

          I think those figures are quite outdated.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        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.

        • ramble81@lemmy.zip
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          Now comes the fun part. Do you know of any good quality “dumb” 4K OLED in the 65” range?

          • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            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.

            • ramble81@lemmy.zip
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              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.

              • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                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.

                • ramble81@lemmy.zip
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                  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.

            • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              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

              • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                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.

                • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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                  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.

    • ragepaw@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      I think a common problem on Internet posts, is not enough Lethal Weapon 2 references.

  • boaratio@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    My wife, despite me telling her not to, connected our washing machine to Wi-Fi because that’s the only way she could get it to run a custom soak cycle. There was no way I could disconnect it from the Wi-Fi, and it started getting OTA firmware updates. Then it started throwing error codes when I would try to start it. Then one day it was totally dead. It killed the display panel which to replace costs 2/3rd of just buying a new one. Nothing mechanically wrong with it, just the display board that has an ESP-32 in it that got bricked by a firmware update. I went to our local appliance store and just bought a “dumb” washing machine that has actual buttons and no ability to connect to the Internet.

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      I have actually fully isolated my washing machine from the outside network via pi-hole. I can still start/stop and change cycles on it via WiFi. I also have WireGuard set so I can connect remotely to my local network exactly for such scenarios.

    • voxthefox@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      The problem is researchers found out that lg tvs will scan available ssids and connect to any network available to deliver its payload back to LG, without your knowledge or consent

        • brambc@lemmy.world
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          Sanity has left us all since, erm, about 2001? Might be off with that estimate, but definitely before 2007!

              • Feyd@programming.dev
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                When the TV is in standby mode and appears to be turned off, it only monitors for the wake word if you have previously enabled the Far-Field feature. If no wake word is detected, the audio used for wake word detection is processed locally on the TV, promptly deleted, and is not transmitted to LG servers.

                Is this what you’re talking about? It looks like it is speculation that they might connect to open wifi because they can, not any sort of reproduction or confirmation like the OP suggested

                • ag10n@lemmy.world
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                  4 days ago

                  Read the arstechnica article, watch the videos linked in said article

                  It scans your network for devices, and they promote visibility to connected devices

                  “The [G5] crawled our entire network and found dozens of unrelated devices, including smartwatches and phones of our staff who didn’t even know we were working on this,” Steve Burke, Gamers Nexus’ editor-in-chief, said.

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                  It’s something that has been said for years now about smart TVs in general not just LG, but I haven’t been able to find any conclusive evidence that it’s happening… And obviously it can’t be proven that it’s NOT happening.

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        Gamers’ Nexus speculated on the ability to connect to the other SSIDs if memory serves, or did that ever get proven?

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          Not proven, but obviously that’s possible for any device with Wi-Fi, and it has happened with many other “smart” devices before

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        Do you have neighbors with a non password protected gateway or router to the open internet? Open unsecured networks seem so rare these days.

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            Hypothetically, if I were an evil data mining corporation, I would setup my devices to talk to each other on a proprietary protocol, so if any one of my devices has access to the internet, all of them could use it to exfil data. I’d also advertise and heavily incentivise users to download and install an app to “get the best experience” with my devices, and then use that app to exfil data from any of my devices, even if the person with the app doesn’t own them.

          • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            fucking printers. also tire pressure monitoring systems. if i were an evil corporation i would use TPMS to communicate

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              Also some ISPs will run public networks off of your hardware if you’re renting the modem.

              • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                our city (with good intentions) set up public hotspots all over town so people without internet at home could use free wifi during lockdowns. now half the town’s tvs probably update over them.

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        I have an offline LG TV and an open isolated guest network it could theoretically connect to. I check periodically and it has never attempted to do so.

        Just an anecdote, but I personally have seen no evidence of this happening.

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        5 days ago

        Sounds like we need to have some fake point where it can drop its package into instead. Make the TV think it uploaded successfully but it just goes into a trash can.

        Somehow this can work with some DNS tinkering.

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          You’re thinking of a black hole. DNS wouldn’t do it. DNS just translates a domain name to an IP. If you know the IP, you can skip DNS entirely.

          I’d also take a guess that whatever repository a spy devices is uploading to has some kind of handshake procedure. You don’t want you spy TV to upload all that juicy data to a competitor or a researcher.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        what would happen if i set up a little router with a virtual internet right next to the tv? i was a hardware guy in the 90s so like, i am the teensiest bit out of date

        • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          If it can’t phone home and get a response it will fail over to searching for any open wifi it can find. You could put the TV in a metal box, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a TV.

          • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            i guess i wanted it to phone home on my fake internet? i am not the word good today, it is rehearsal day and i am thinking about music

            • SillyDude@lemmy.zipOP
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              3 days ago

              It would be doing that, but it would also be trying to connect to any open WiFi available. Your neighbors xfinity modem that broadcasts their open public WiFi. Phones with hotspots. Anything it can, it will try to connect to. If it can’t make it out through that channel, it logs all that info to send when it can.

            • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              You would need to know how to answer it how it wants. Which is hard to do since it’s all sent encrypted.

    • SillyDude@lemmy.zipOP
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      5 days ago

      I’m a hardware guy. So I think: how can they scream if they have no mouth? Mr. Anderson?

  • RabbitBBQ@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    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.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I can’t figure out where to get a dumb Sceptre. They disappeared from Amazon a year or so ago.

      • AgentSeven@lemmy.zip
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        5 days ago

        Yeah they’re gone now. This is one of those things where I can’t get a capitalist to explain it to me. There has to be an absolutely monstrous market for this. So why does it go unfilled?

        • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          My best guess: When they make a smart TV with ads built in they make money off those ads. That makes such TVs more profitable per unit than ad-free TVs. The only way ad-free (and privacy-friendly) TVs would make them more money is if they’d sell much more units. There aren’t enough people who deeply care about ads and privacy to drive such increased sales numbers.

          While there is a relevant market for relatively dumb displays (companies that need digital signage), that market is willing to pay a significant markup and usually values reliability over picture fidelity. So yes, you can buy a dumb display but it might not have the most impressive picture and will definitely cost a lot more.

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            So yes, you can buy a dumb display

            Even that is only kinda true, in theory. You’re not going to find a digital signage display at any normal retailer.

          • AgentSeven@lemmy.zip
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            3 days ago

            Yes and so the answer is: "because capitalism is full of shit, the huge market goes unfilled because there is even more money to be made in fucking people than there is in this particular huge market and there’s only so many resources to go around, so maximum profit might mean maximum fuckery, but who fucking cares, certainly not capitalism.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Got a link? All I see are used ones, and even then only about a dozen of them (which is far from “a ton”).

          Again, the issue here is that the TV cartel has entirely eliminated the choice to buy a dumb TV new at retail.

          • FG_3479@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Buy a smart TV and leave the internet disconnected. Google TV models have a “basic TV” mode made for that.

  • likebudda@reddthat.com
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    4 days ago

    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.

  • fubarx@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Not sure about the older LG models, but in the newer ones, the wifi and bluetooth or on the same board. Cutting off the module means the remote stops working.

    Personally, I’ve isolated and blocked the network, factory reset the TV, and set it up to power off when not in use. It only gets content from an ancient AppleTV box.

    I paid and own the glass. They can go screw themselves.

    • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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      5 days ago

      Well, the appleTV box likely does similar things, just for apple ad network instead. Which is better than a data broker at least!

      Sadly it seems like a Linux SBC (something with the newest encoders like Orange Pi 5 plus & Pro) is the best way to go with Plasma Bigscreen which I think is still in Beta. Plus the SBCs now cost like 150€ instead of 80€ because of stupid corporate AI scam bubble…

      • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Yeah the price jump killed me making a vanilla android tv unit this year. Chromecast is an outright spy but we dance for a little while longer

    • Hond@piefed.social
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      5 days ago

      I also removed the module with both wifi and bt. Atleast my remote still has IR and the only thing that has stopped working is the wiimote like magic mouse. Well, and the mic on the remote which i never used.

      I was mostly worried about closing a wireless attack vector to a device which will never get a security update again. The chances are small. But malware spreading over bluetooth doesnt sound impossible or far fetched considering how fucked everything already is.

  • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    does it have bluetooth? once I read about those trying to connect to your neighbors appliances through bluetooth and use their networks