Amazon had (perhaps still has) whispernet - a global coverage of cellular networks. It was used to download books to your kindle, essentially anywhere in the world, without having to have a local plan or WiFi.

It was 2G iirc, enough for book download. Uploading a perceptive hash of what you are watching - e.g. a frame every few seconds - also fits on 2G speeds.

Ok, so...

TV phones home a lot, with info about stuff, some info big lots of bandwidth.

could there be an attack with buying some tvs and putting them on public WiFi - and could one find a way to increase the amount the tv was sending so it amounted to an attack - but still have plausible deniability.

If tvs were put on public wifi, which I guess there is no reason why you shouldn't put your tv on public wifi, and the tv is using lots of bandwidth, and your tv is popular in a country with lots of free wifi, is that tv manufacturer guilty of an attack on the free wifi infrastructure of that country?

I'm asking for a short story or several I might write some day.

Also maybe I'm mistaken, but don't most modern cars have a built in modem for sending telemetry to the manufacturer as well?

Yes. Toyota seems to like putting the transceiver behind the glove box, forcing you to introduce a bundle of rattles to your newly purchased vehicle to remove. Also, I'm pretty sure removing it disables some of the front speakers, requiring manual wire connecting to get them back. You could maybe leave the device in there but encase it in a Faraday cage, but still rattles are introduced.

Ford, iirc, places it on the floor under or behind some seats making it much easier to deal with.

I think MA just passed a law about not allowing vehicles sold there to sell your telemetry data or something.

> I think MA just passed a law about not allowing vehicles sold there to sell your telemetry data or something.

i believe they just have to share the data with others, which they don't want to do.

Whispernet is dead from what I understand. As countries began shutting down 3G networks, Amazon was no long able to get connectivity at a price point where it was economically feasible.

Not dead, just replaced.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...

Why not use helium network?

"doing active scans for any unsecured wifi network in range"

This doesn’t seem like a practical thing for manufacturers to implement. How common are such networks in actuality? Literally the only time I ever encountered unsecured Wi-Fi networks in the past several years were guest networks, and all of those were gated by a capture portal that would have blocked any sort of attempt at telemetry or ad serving.

A deal with comcast and their ubiquitous pseudo public hotspots would simplify that.

xfinitywifi, the comparable similar functionality from CenturyLink, etc, or if you happen to live just a bit too close to a McDonalds or other business that has open WiFi. And of course the possibility of one of your neighbors screwing up his WiFi setup.

There are a lot of ways this can (and has) gone horribly wrong for privacy.

I doubt any TV does this but if I needed to implement it I would just do it the same way that I use wifi in hotels that have captive portals without paying for it: tunnel IP over DNS.

Pretty common.

https://finder.wifi.xfinity.com/

Xfinity requires login. It is not open.

> doesn’t seem like a practical thing for manufacturers to implement.

In terms of what, lines of code? Engineer days?

Like the parent comment says: scan for some open Wi-Fi in range and connect. If that provides Internet access, it's good to go.

Might have 4g or 5g chips in them. I'm sure they could get a good deal on data if they put it in millions of TVs.