LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

I have a new LG TV, holy moly what a terrible user experience. Out of the box it requires you to create an LG account. PITA, but OK. Except I was supposed to set the location first, instead I set it after. So now you have the problem that you can not log into LG.com using my own email (even from a web browser) because it says: "incorrect country". I contacted their tech support about this, the only fix is to switch back the country code on the TV (to US_Other), then delete the account from there, then set country code to US, then create it again. OMG. I guess there is no fix if TV breaks before you do this..or if you forget what the original country code was. You are then forced to use a different email for any future LG product. I notice that all LG smart products use the same phone app, BTW.

Also, I bought an LG soundbar to go along with it. You would think they would work well together. The soundbar sounds fine, but the synchronization drifts over time. I've tried optical, LG's enhanced optical (allows you to control the volume) and HDMI eARC. In theory optical in PCM mode works better, but then you give up the volume control. Why should an end customer know about any of this? Lip sync is a simple problem to solve (timing pulses and code slipping will always work) and they have failed at it.

Also: their remote sucks (compared with Roku).

Anyway, so no respect for LG.

US residential proxies are the bane of the internet. They're the major source of social media manipulation and spam.

Services can dramatically reduce abuse by blocking entire IP ranges based on country of origin, organization, or type (hosting providers). But a company can't block US residential IPs if it would also cut off many of their real customers.

The US government (probably the NSA) should be cracking down hard on US residential proxy networks. They're a genuine national security threat, actual data/identity loss of American citizens, act as infra for foreign covert influence campaigns, botnets used in hacking/DoS attacks, etc.

Major US ISPs (Comcast, AT&T) should detect clearly suspicious activity coming from customer IPs and warn them to scan their computers, check their TV apps, and find whatever is turning their internet into a proxy. It's very bad for the customers too (slows things down, gets their IP banned, etc)

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?

Stop hooking up your LG tv to any network

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?

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

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.

My TV doesn't know my router's wi-fi password.

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.

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.

Apparently all these vendors did nothing to prevent this, a nice article from spur intelligence

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/video/how-smart-tvs-may-be-s...

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.

An angle that's often not explored is that companies like BrightData that install spyware on your smart gadgets are based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It's not unreasonable to assume that these Israeli cybersecurity firms are also sending data to the Israeli military. While everyone is complaining about AI scrapers and bots, they aren't even looking at the main culprits.

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.

Is there a (technical) difference between a residential proxy and bot network node?

The messed up thing is that we need to rely on LG to stop allowing it rather than just making it illegal.

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.

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.

I have a Samsung odyssey ultrawide. All I want to do is have it display what I plug into the inputs. But I constantly have to approve new terms of service, install updates and worst of all switching inputs takes forever and often leads me to some tv guide like feature where I can stream a bunch of media.

Lg, Samsung… I mean are there any companies that make a non-smart monitor? This monitor I have was highly recommended on many review sites. Are we just accepting the fact that we don’t truly get to own or control these devices? It’s so frustrating.

LG is malware and spyware.

I can imagine someone choosing "no ads" without realizing they just agreed to let strangers route traffic through their home IP indefinitely

> 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.

Some of you might want to check out throwaway96/dejavuln-autoroot or the older throwaway96/faultmanager-autoroot, www.webosbrew.org/rooting and cani.rootmy.tv. Looks like it's patchy for the very latest models, but you might find the literature useful anyway.

>“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.

So does this mean that using a proxy will cause all of the "smart" features to stop working? Win-win.

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.

I face a different issue on LG TV, Every time i turn off the Live Plus option, but it got enabled again on its own without being asked. no consent at all. Has anyone else seen this ?

Because... they want to corner that market opportunity themselves at the system level? I doubt it'd be anything less given LG (and other smart TV manufacturers)'s track record.

Thanks for the heads up, LG.

Those cheap/discount tv brands make soo much sense these days

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.

"DO NOT BUY: LG’s Spyware TVs, Monitors, and Wiretapping Concerns

Gamers Nexus"

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uefFYe6bM

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.

I'm against undisclosed proxies, but I would pick pay-by-residential-proxy over pay-by-ads every time.

After some research I went with a Sony Bravia. The screen is ridiculously reflective which is unusable next to any window at certain angles, and it wasn't the cheapest, but after some research since it uses that Google TV crap and has no splash screens, I could keep WiFi off on it and use my Apple TV.

TCL and now LG are to be fully avoided, Samsung isn't to be trusted (a future update if you allow it can lead to what happened here with LG). Samsung probably has the best hardware, but too bad.

If we don't vote with our wallets the enshittification of everything tech will march over and trample us that much faster.

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.

Stop buying "smart" TV

This is the best news I've heard all week. Finally good news for once!

It's absolutely crazy that they were accepted in the first place

This is madness.

Only LG themselves should be able to have this kind of invasive control over your television.