Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks

Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by deadbunny on Sunday June 19, 2022 @09:15PM (#31805205)

And every thread says they can connect to open WiFi without providing any proof that they do. It would be trivial to test and prove but no-one ever does.

I'm not saying they wouldn't do it but I'd prefer some proof before judging them (without having to shell out to be the guinea pig).

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by synicalx on Sunday June 19, 2022 @10:44PM (#31805762)

On a Sony TV, at least on my one (before I yanked the wifi antennas out) you could just create an open network and then sit watching the Wifi settings screen on the TV and watch it just jump right on.

If you're really concerned about proof, just go to a hifi store and turn on your mobile hotspot without a password - I bet you could get a TV somewhere to connect with minimal effort.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by KennyBlanken on Sunday June 19, 2022 @10:06PM (#31805564)

https://forum.developer.samsung.com/t/if-you-choose-to-not-c...

https://web.archive.org/web/20190521054343/https://www.reddi...

The reason there are likely so few reports is because a)open wifi networks are very rare b)you can't really tell that the TV has done it, until it shows its hand (as in the case above, notifying the user that it auto-updated itself.)

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by oneoff786 on Sunday June 19, 2022 @10:29PM (#31805699)

If it’s showing you ads, it’s connected. If it’s not showing you ads, it’s not connected.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by cornstalks on Monday June 20, 2022 @12:02AM (#31806158)

> If it’s not showing you ads, it’s not connected.

If it’s not showing you ads, it might not be connected. It could still be connected and performing all sorts of shenanigans without necessarily showing you any ads.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by oneoff786 on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:09AM (#31808872)

Technically true, but unlikely.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by hedora on Monday June 20, 2022 @03:23AM (#31807265)

My Samsung fridge manual says it'll mesh network with any Samsung TVs it sees, specifically to share tracking data for marketing purposes.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by trh0awayman on Monday June 20, 2022 @08:05AM (#31809287)

Any chance you could upload the part of the manual that says that? That's insane - I have a Samsung TV and generally thought I was safe by disabling internet access.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by Geonode on Monday June 20, 2022 @12:19AM (#31806243)

Whether they do now is irrelevant. Their entire history is violating trust.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by toma_caliente on Monday June 20, 2022 @02:03AM (#31806805)

You can't just make a claim without any evidence and then say "well it doesn't matter if they actually do it or not"

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by mschuster91 on Monday June 20, 2022 @03:51AM (#31807437)

Samsung (and the rest of the TV industry, Samsung is just the worst of the bunch) has fucked up trust in them extremely hard and they are not showing in any way that they have learned from the past or how they plan to re-gain consumer trust. Until that happens, it is foolish to assume they would never implement something like "connect to an open wifi".

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by philistine on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:24AM (#31808973)

See you’re moving the goalpost here. You went from they can to they could. That’s exactly the point of people who require proof it has happened.

When we have proof of one manufacturer connecting to an open wi-fi network to send its snooping data, we’ll have a a reckoning on our hands. I guarantee it.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by mschuster91 on Monday June 20, 2022 @09:30AM (#31810137)

Of course I'm moving goalposts. This kind of shit should be banned before someone gets the idea (or audacity) to implement it. The time for "move fast and deal with the law later" is over - it's obvious that the technical possibility is easy to implement and hard to detect for the average user, it's obvious that there is nothing good for the customer that comes out of it, and so the law should for once be proactive instead of reactive.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by DiggyJohnson on Sunday June 19, 2022 @09:54PM (#31805473)

What would be the proper way to test this?

Wireless networking is something I usually avoid in a technical capacity, but this seems like something worth messing around with (and reporting back on).

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by livueta on Sunday June 19, 2022 @10:16PM (#31805620)

Should be a fairly straightforward bit of airodump. Even if you don't capture the handshake, you can cross-reference the macs of stations associated with the AP of interest against the mac of your device. If the mac is randomized to a sufficient degree that you can't cross-reference it I guess you'd need to capture the association, but that shouldn't be a problem if you can turn the tv off/on and it does the thing consistently.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by deadbunny on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @06:31PM (#31829841)

Even easier than that, set up an open WiFi network, see if the TV connects to it. Super easy for anyone that claims TVs are doing this to do.

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Re:Samsung Busted for Cheating TV Test Benchmarks by DiggyJohnson on Sunday June 19, 2022 @10:23PM (#31805667)

Thank you kindly, that’s exactly the start I needed. Cheers

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