I'd never give a Samsung device unfiltered internet access.

At the risk of a smart-ass reply, I think you could say the same for almost any consumer electronics

Even if you don't suspect malfeasance / advertising / surveillance, a lot of these devices and their software are sloppily developed and highly insecure

"unfiltered internet access"? How would you even know what to filter?

Block it entirely, and hope it that doesn't connect to your Samsung phone via Bluetooth or WiFi and use it as a proxy.

Some devices refuse to to operate if they can't make DNS queries.

Then they can exfiltrate data over DNS.

I mean, only if the DNS server is one run by the company in question.

I own nonzero such devices that hit 8.8.8.8 as an internet access sanity check so I have to keep just that IP allowed for them and block all other traffic.

DNS is a hierarchical protocol. You can exfiltrate data as long as the DNS server is resolving recursively.

Good to know. I didn't know that.

For my devices in question I can see the size and frequency of the requests in OpenWRT and doubt it's actually doing so.

Then give it a DNS server to look up.

Yes exactly.

I mean, at some point, victim-blaming does sound like the correct response here.

If the answer to your question involved giving money to Samsung, then you asked the wrong question, and you need to do better next time.

All I meant was that sometimes if you fully block a device it refuses to work, and you may need to selectively unblock just 8.8.8.8 for that device.

Obviously buying such a device is bad, but sometimes you get one for free or close to it and it's worth the hassle to not pay hundreds for a better one.

Such devices should be retuned for a full refund. Vote with your wallet.

My devices that do this were bought off aliexpress for about a quarter the price of a reputable brand. They do function and I purchased them expecting I would have to do some finagleing to get them to work and not phone home.

What I've done for the small handful of wifi connected devices I have is to have them connect to "internet sharing" from my laptop's wifi.

Naturally when my laptop is using its wifi to create a hotspot it isn't actually connected to the internet, so they never actually get access to the internet.

(Doesn't work if you actually want the internet, and not just wifi, related features of course)

Give them access to a segregated home network.

Services like ControlD and NextDNS have built in blocklists for IoT telemetry and bullshit. I'm sure it's easy to do it with PiHole as well.

I use ControlD and it's blocking 38% of all DNS requests in my household. 8% of that is IoT telemetry. It's unbelievable how much of this bullshit is built into the products we use.

IIRC there were some Pihole blocking lists for Samsung, Apple and Microsoft etc.

A couple years ago I thought my fridge was appropriately blocked from the intarwebs. But a router update flipped the bit on activating the default guest network (which I normally keep turned off.) So for about 6 months my fridge was getting out to the net via the guest network. I found out about it when I got a call from my ISP asking what the heck was going on. Apparently a bot net had found my fridge and was doing all manner of bad things.

Moral of the story is... always double check your router settings to make sure enshittified iot devices aren't making you look like a newb.

Sounds weird, why would you give your fridge your wifi password in the first place?

Well the real question is why would you buy a connected fridge in the first place. Not that I visit fridges alleys in stores on a regular basis but I have never actually seen one.

Their TVs will connect to open networks without asking you. Perhaps the fridges do the same.

Are there evidence it is really happening? Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood? My neighbors aren't tech savy yet they use the wifi configured provided with the router which has a passphrase. I believe even in McDonalds you get the wifi password only upon purchase in the receipt. Most open networks I still encounter are in big stores such as IKEA or airports and you still have to register to connect. I doubt the signal woukd reach even the closest houses anyway.

> Are there evidence it is really happening?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45867034

> Which open wifi network are left in residencial neighborhood?

Some neighborhoods are mixed use. Some residences are in dense buildings. Some people configured guest networks with no password. Some ISPs made their home gateways captive portal access points.

Having a guest network doesn't mean it is open. It can just means you have a passphrase that is different than other home devices and that you may be isolating them in a separate VLAN.

I would never run an open network on my home connection, there are way too many legal risks unless you can log who is connect to it and when.

No one said guest network meant no password.

> Well the real question is why would you buy a connected fridge in the first place.

It’s getting so you don’t have a real choice. You can buy a fridge (or any appliance pretty much) that is basic and doesn’t do the connected thing. But often you want the upscaled models because of real hardware features that are desirable. And these are always bundled with the “connectivity” options. It used to be you just ignored these bits. But they’re getting more and more invasive.

what hardware features in a fridge can you not live without apart from "keeps inside cold & light comes on when I open the door" ?

Louis Rossmann has one. He loves it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQTIuX84ids

It has a large Android tablet in the front door, so it can show you ads – coming soon.

Ref Silicon Valley: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HcXu4_K1tMQ&t=45s

I don't know about "live without", but automatic defroster, crisper drawer, ice maker, water dispenser, alarm when the door isn't closed. being divided such that my food choices fit easily into the fridge (some people want to put a large wide pizza box directly into their fridge), power consumption.I dunno if you'd call looks a hardware feature, but it has to match the rest of the kitchen decor. The TV in the door isn't something I want at all though.

I may an idiot and haven't been in the market for new appliances for a while, but between an ice maker and a door alarm, how could you possibly require Internet acccess? Does it offer an app on your phone to operate the ice maker when you're not home?

travisgriggs said refrigerator manufacturers limited desired hardware features to models which had undesired network features. This was the last comment which mentioned network features.

delaminator asked what hardware features could not be lived without.

fragmede listed desired hardware features.

probably the ice maker or something. I bought new appliances a few months ago, and I made sure none of them had WiFi. I even paid £50 more for the washing machine that didn't have an app.

omg - why let your router update? :)

most updates are downgrades in my experience unless it addresses something very specific

Not updating the router just sounds like another security incident waiting to happen. The botnet will just be on your router instead of your fridge

Updates themselves are a security risk, because they're a first-party malware vector. Pick your poison.

I just avoid all Samsung CE.

I'd never buy another samsung device

How long until they ship with embedded 5G modem? Would you wrap your Samsung devices with alu foil?

I think they may go the easier way first: with online only OOBE where you cannot access all tv features until you acknowledge and accept the "legal" stuff first.

You know, bit like Microsoft forces you to create online account after installation is done

There's always going to be enough of a "dumb TV" market among the elderly / linear-only / no internet crowd to make that an extremely bad idea.

Sure, some (high-end) TVs might do this, but definitely not all of them.

Dumb tvs exist today; they just sell for a premium to make up for the lost adtech sales revenue.

I suspect this will continue. Ads and no privacy for poor people. The wealthy & well educated will have tvs that don’t spy on them.

This idea has been around since at least a decade ago. The truth is, only a fraction of customers care about ads or privacy, and only a fraction of technical people in that group are capable of doing network filtering (VLAN, MITM, DNS blocklist, whatever). The absolute numbers are so small, as long as manufacturers can extract enough value from the remaining 99% of customers, they just don't care.

I have had a lot of friends amazed by the fact that when they connect to my home Wi-Fi they stop seeing ads. Zero of them interested in implementing something similar in their home.

the other thing is that it would not be as effective as presumed because 5G cell service in residential areas in the US is spottier than people realize. A lot of us are relying on WiFi calling.

How do you do it particularly? Pi-Hole or something else like NextDNS with adblock? (or Mullvad adblock DNS)

Or connects to the Samsung TV of your neighbor, who definitely granted all access to the internet.

Soldering your TV in 2026 sounds like real fun ...

I've been reading about that risk since smart TVs came out. It's not worth the cost for the manufacturer.

Samsung is truly the worst of all big tech companies. All their first party apps contain ads. They kill hard fuses if you want to change things, and meanwhile bundle the devices of a large segment of the costumer base with first party Israeli spyware with full system and background install access.

I bought a Samsung watch once, had to reverse it to enable functionality that was advertised a year before but never delivered. It died because the watch decided to suck in water during a reboot while swimming, they quoted me almost the full price to repair it, even though it was clearly a software bug that caused another advertised feature (namely it's ipx rating) to fail.

And while I also wouldn't give Xiaomi iot devices on the network full internet access, at least I can use those things normally.

Besides the fact that Xiaomi devices are completely untrustworthy, they are usually great pieces of hardware. I bought a Xiaomi vacuum years ago. Everything was in Chinese and I had to watch a youtube video to figure out how to set it up. Besides that, the whole unboxing and setup experience felt like an Apple product. That vacuum was light years ahead of the iRobot it replaced. Incredible product and cheaper than just about everything else available at the time. That's when I realized American tech was toast.

I agree with you 100% about Samsung. They make nice hardware, but the software experience is among the worst in the industry. I don't know how they can be considered a premium product. I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware. I'm surprised they don't inject ads into the photos you take. They have ads everywhere else - even in the phone dialing app. Their TV's are still good as long as you don't connect them to the internet. Once they start putting LTE radios in them to download ads without wifi, I will be done with those too.

Out of the cheap phones I bought over the years, Xiaomi was the only manufacturer that didn't load up their phones with crapware backdoors. Samsung and Oppo was shiped with one of those crapware backdoors that installed apps beyond your back.

Eventually I got fed up, and started using hand-me-down iPhones for second phones.

> cheap phones

Maybe this is where the difference comes from?

> Eventually I got fed up, and started using hand-me-down iPhones for second phones.

Wonder how it would be if you tried a hand-me-down Galaxy flagship for comparison - that would be a more fair comparison. Cheap Androids are not in the same category as iPhones.

>I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware.

I was reading this thinking "that sounds awful, I'm never getting a Samsung phone" before snapping back to reality and realising that I'm staring at one.

I've never seen the issues you're talking about. I don't see any ads on my phone. I'm not using the default launcher, but aside from that it's stock. I would've turned off Bixby and whatever other rubbish it has when I first got it.

Ads in the dialing app!? I agree wholeheartedly that Samsung is being enshittified, but on my phone I can't see ads anywhere, least of all when I'm dialing a number.

Right. Ads in the dialer? I saw that once, with one of the Chinese brands. Samsung? Never.

In fact, I've been exclusively on Samsung phones for over a decade now, never had any experience remotely similar to what GP describes. My greatest annoyances are 1) Bixby, and 2) apps being pretty basic and missing obvious functionality (but then it's not like any other vendor offers better apps...).

I'm going to guess GP is in the US; I'm in the EU, and maybe phones for EU market come with less of this kind of bullshit.

We literally got an email at work telling us not to watch anything work related on any Samsung TVs because by default they will take screenshots of your content and send them back to Samsung for analysis unless you opt out. Absolutely bonkers.

How do you limit it’s Internet access besides not plugging it in?

Muy samsung odyssey g9 monitor connected for the first time through my phone, also Samsung.

I'd never give a Samsung device ~~unfiltered~~ internet access.

FTFY

Why did you connect it to the internet in the first place?

This. If you want online content use a stream box.

I'm still using my Samsung dumb TV from circa 2008. paired with ancient Chromecast. No way I'm going to buy a smart TV as long as this combination keeps working. No ads, and things mostly just work, and it cost me next to nothing.

Even a smart TV is dumb enough if you use it as HDMI out for your actual streaming device (Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, whatever) and never connect it to the internet. There were rumors about smart TVs connecting to unsecured wifi networks a few years ago, but I don't remember any verified cases or TVs.

This is the way. Allowing appliances to connect to the internet, when it's not necessary, is insecure.

At least with a single-purpose device, you know you're not at the mercy of some minimally-funded, likely-outsourced software team inside a hardware manufacturer.

I bought the 2025 Samsung smart TV that RTINGS recommended as the best OLED and connected it once at first setup to download updates. Then I blocked it in the router and disconnected it in the TV menu and it’s been smooth sailing. Everything goes through my Apple TV and there’s no ads and it just works.

I never agreed to the original terms and won’t let my Samsung TV on wifi for this reason.

I let my TV on wifi, but block internet access at the router. Things like Airplay and Chromecast still work great, but no ads/tracking/etc.

Is that tied to the port or the MAC because the device can just change addresses and you won't know.

You would know if your device starts updating. And if it changes mac to get around the block then it goes in the trash.

OpenWrt, make a wifi network only for those nasty spying devices, printers, tvs etc

Same!!! I do every so often connect it to update it if a newer firmware is actually worth it… The extra upside to not accepting the terms is that none of the samsung bloatware apps even start - the TV runs much faster than just with the wifi disconnected.

It doesnt matter if you do or dont, those things are worthless in court in any reasonable country. They frequently want their users to agree to illegal things.

[delayed]

Disconnect it from the internet and use an appletv. It can't update then.

This works until apple enshitifies

Damn good point.

Unless you have root and can do anything the hardware is capable of, it's not your device. And you shouldn't let any sort of non-owned devices on your network.

Why? Cause devices controlled by other orgs are a foothold situation. And we've had countless attacks of footholds being used as internal points of attack, DDoS, and other attacks.

That also means that all your "cloud devices" should be able to work 100% offline. If not, return them as defective.

Hunh. This reminds me... I have a copy of ghidra and a bunch of JTAG adaptors. I bet I could suck the firmware out of my old model Visio TV. I already unsoldered the microphone from the motherboard.

I have a Samsung smart TV it's never seen the internet, I just didn't let it connect - it's a display for a box running Fedora, that is its entire job to be dumb and display whatever is sent down the wire.

Devices that do need to be on the internet but I can foresee no reason they ever need to talk to anything else on the network go on their own VLAN (down to the level of my VR headset since it had a Meta logo on the box...).

My boys gaming PC can't even see my desktop (since there isn't a scenario where it needs to).

Other than the "smart" TV I own nothing "Smart" because I don't want anything smart.

I'm not adverse to smart hardware.

I am adverse to being trapped with rental hardware masquerading as as 'sale'. Almost all corporate cloudshit is that.

As a counter example, I have 2 of these opengarage for my garage doors. They work superbly and integrate seamlessly with HomeAssistant.

https://opengarage.io/

And yes, I control them completely. FLOSS and all. And they just work.

"Give some other monopoly rulr over your attention"

Ultimately the choice of platform is about trust rather than capability. Apple has been a much better citizen historically than any of the smart TV companies.

Those other smart TV companies write shit software that performs terribly on bad hardware and may have ads - YMMV but that's not really "worse" than Apple's anti-steering clauses concealing massive fees on ATV apps like Plex or ESPN and causing half the western world to revise their competition laws to outlaw many of their practices. It's just bad for different reasons.

super ultimately, the choice of platform of trust is about farming long enough to get monopoly lock in and then slot in a MBA to convert that trust to cash.

Anyone who see anything other than enshittification is living on the same month-to-month timeline that capitalism wants in their consumers.

Apple TV is much better about this. I have never had it pop up or interrupt me. When it is idle it just goes to a pleasant screen saver and then powers off after a while. It doesn’t try and promote content or display ads for shows. Granted, that could change at any time, but right now I think it is better than all the alternatives.

Ads are coming to Apple Maps so it’s probably only a matter of time before the rest of the ecosystem is infected.

It is better, but I hated how some time ago they started showing trailers at the start of a show, with no option to turn this off. It’s a small thing but it’s super annoying, if I want to check out what’s new I will do it myself, thank you very much.

I'm not an Apple fan, but if someone wants a 'smart TV' (access to streaming services, etc) and doesn't want to go the Linux-box-connected-to-Jellyfin route, then Apple really is just the best option.

In my experience, they've been fine for a few years so far.

That's where I ended up; I was running a linux box with Kodi for a while, but that was a subpar experience for connecting to commercial streaming services (I never was able to figure out how to get Kodi to launch firefox on the site's URL, which would have been Just Fine for us).

I use Chromecast. But I changed the home page to show app screen by defult instead of recommendations.

This is ultimately what we did in my house for every Samsung TV.

Their smart TV stuff used to be marginally interesting. When Samsung TV Plus launched it was fantastic. They weren’t yet sure of how to handle ads so even the ad space was still nice, and marginally useful.

As they figured out the ad strategy, apps started disappearing and new ones appeared that couldn’t be uninstalled.

Then the OS updates started cratering performance. I have a Samsung smart TV from after 2020 that takes about 4 seconds to register a single remote control command in the smart TV GUI.

You may be looking for a “commercial LCD display”.

How about just not connecting your TV to the Internet? Then it's just a dumb display?

When I was shopping for a TV years ago, Samsung had all the features I wanted (for gaming).

But Samsung's ad behavior led me to buy a Vizio TV instead.

I've got some bad news for you, Walmart acquired Vizio two years ago:

"This acquisition is not merely about expanding Walmart's product lineup but rather part of a sophisticated commercial strategy to integrate its retail operations, owned media channels and TV hardware into a cohesive ecosystem. This ecosystem is designed to generate and share data, influence shopping behavior and, ultimately, drive sales through an innovative approach to advertising..." "...By owning a television manufacturer, Walmart can now directly serve and, crucially, measure the impact of ads on consumer behavior. This capability significantly enhances Walmart's potential to convert advertisements into retail purchases."

https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcou...

bleh.

Only saving grace I have is that I bought my P659-G1 in 2019. While it doesn't prevent bad updates, it's a little less likely they pushed deep changes to old models.

And I can't believe it's been over 6 years since I had already eliminated Samsung for their ad behavior, and not only have they not changed, they've doubled-down.

The best Smart TV is the one that is just 24/24 HDMI connected to your old Linux laptop with a GUI tweaked to act as a Smart TV with an air mouse as remote.

When I upgraded my desktop, I only needed to pickup a case and a few extra parts to have enough for a functional home theater PC. Running standard Fedora Workstation, controlled with Logitech K400+.

I stubbornly refuse to ever connect my TV to the internet.

K400 and a raspberry pi is keeping my Samsung tv offline. Little bit under powered but gets the job done. Movies are fine, YouTube 90%

I use my TV as a monitor and this still happens. When you don't accept it just gets more aggressive. I'm pretty sure there's a "bug"[0] that ends up slowing the TV down because it keeps that process going.

I'm pretty confident you can't agree to a contract if you can't opt out. I don't want new features and I'm fine if everything stays the same. And no, please do not adjust the image settings again... I didn't want the AI frame interpolation then and I don't want it now

[0] with Samsung engineers I don't believe they've tested anything and just assumed the user would accept it instead of deny it 20 times. It'll also get less buggy when I do a reboot, so I'm pretty sure it's a memory leak

We are talking about a company where if I press the exit button there's a 50% chance I get the menu or not. It's literally a random result. If I'm in, say, Netflix, press exit, I'll turn to my computer screen and half the time the Samsung menu will open and half the time it won't.

Also starting the TV will flash my desktop and then go "ops, no signal" and I have to just keep restarting the TV and switching inputs (not touching the hdmi cable btw) until it works. And no, my desktop doesn't sleep and yes this issue is the reason why.

So I am 100% sure it's not conspiratorial, I'm 100% sure they just suck at their job. I'm sure the fridge will be great...

I just use my smart tv as tv and use PS5 as media box avoids all this hassle. There is nothing on cable/satellite tv other than ads anyway

>Give me a dumb TV any time of the day now

Just disconnect your current one from the internet.