I disconnect from WiFi. It makes my “smart” tv a normal one that doesn’t serve my shitty ads, lag or turn on some random SamsungTV channel.

Just because you disconnected it from wifi does not mean they cannot connect it through lte without your knowledge

It's also true (by definition) that literally any device that you own could be connecting through LTE without your knowledge.

Is LTE a synonym for free internet? Who pays for connection?

Maybe your comment was tongue in cheek but if the product did not reveal it contained a radio transmitter, this would undoubtedly be illegal in the US, EU & UK.

And what will you do when there are no TVs to buy that do not contain LTE transmitters to force more spying upon you?

Do most of them contain LTE transmitters? Is their share increasing?

I don’t know, but it’s not long ago that TVs did not spy on you or serve you personalised ads, and now they all do, so it’s not exactly a huge stretch.

I guess that's one benefit of not having a usable mobile signal at my house.

Well that's illegal in almost all (western) countries. A device need to have an declaration of all radio equipment inside in some form (depending on locale).

It also would be a lot harder to profit from ads when you have to pay for lte bandwidth especially with the prices in the US.

(not op)

> Well that's illegal in almost all (western) countries. A device need to have an declaration of all radio equipment inside in some form (depending on locale).

I agree, but I'm pretty sure that it will be buried on the declarations page.

> It also would be a lot harder to profit from ads when you have to pay for lte bandwidth especially with the prices in the US.

You vastly overestimated the costs of wholesale network access, which is surprisingly cheap, that's why Kindles (for the most part) do have Amazon-provided SIM cards. Bad news is that you can't get it: basically you need commit to a minimum bandwidth (in hundreds of terabytes range) with a minimum subscription count (in hundreds of thousands range) to get these cheap prices, which would be more expensive than individual plans.

Can you extract that SIM card and use for free internet?

Depends? Amazon's SIMs are locked to the specific Kindles, so you need to clone at least the radio identification codes (like IMEI) that is used, and you need to relay that to a specific proxy operated by Amazon because the network-in-question would block (on behalf of Amazon) other servers.

I imagine that in case someone has implemented this, it would be locked in a similar way to ensure that it can only access those ad servers and nothing else.

That’s true. But it does help with the blocking their ads.

Wrap it in tinfoil.

See previous discussion about this problem here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27701977

TL;DR- TVs are using their own cellular connections and/or neighboring open wireless networks.

>L;DR- TVs are using their own cellular connections

The link doesn't say that.

It links to https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/01/huawei-reportedly-plans-f...

And it opens with,

> Though its 5G products are not entirely welcome in the United States, Huawei is reportedly pushing forward with a unique new product: the world’s first 5G television. As Nikkei reports this morning, the Chinese company plans to use the cellular-enabled TV and new PCs to challenge Samsung’s and Apple’s dominant positions in the global consumer electronics market.

That's not really what's being talked about, though. The fear is that if you don't connect your TV to your wifi network, it will have a secret, hidden LTE radio that it uses anyway.

It doesn't seem that Huawei is being at all secretive about this; they are advertising it as a feature.

You're ignoring the part where Samsung TVs are actively connecting to open networks.

That's a single TV, also is this on the market, the link said "reportedly"?

The other comment is also correct.

With LG C9 I haven't seen a single ad in a year since I've had it. There are large amounts of tracking being blocked by pi.hole however. One LG domain has been blocked 22.5k times in past 8.5 months.

The thing that would bother me about this is that you only know what's being blocked; you have no idea if other spyware is getting through because your pihole just doesn't happen to know about another domain in use.

The only surefire way to block it would be to put some metal or foil around the wifi antenna (or disconnect it entirely, if possible). Otherwise the TV could connect to any random open wifi network it might find (assuming there is one in range). Even if you connect it to your own network and block all its traffic, it might just decide your network is broken and find another one.