Let’s talk about televisions. You know, those things that single-handedly and permanently altered living room arrangements in households all across the globe.
Over the course of the last two decades, TVs have gotten much larger, thinner, clearer, curvier, 3D-er (and then 2D-er), faster, brighter, louder, and much, much smarter.
That last characteristic is of most importance here.
(But before we get into all that, can we maybe take a second to discuss just how thin some flagship TVs are getting? Like, dangerously thin. Has anybody actually been unhappy with the thickness of any TV released in the last five years? Does anybody really want a paper-thin screen that requires its own set of unboxing instructions to ensure you don’t accidentally crack that thing within minutes of bringing it home from Best Buy?)
Any modern television will be equipped with “smart” features, including those that allow you to bypass the need for a third-party streaming device, such as a Roku, Amazon Fire TV Stick, or Apple TV. Whether you subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, or whatever the heck HBO Max is, your television likely has all the tools to help you cut the cord without interrupting your 32nd run through “The Office” that once and for all proves Jim is actually the bad guy.
But doing so will inevitably require you to have your TV connected to the internet… which is kind of a problem.
Connecting your TV to the internet will allow you to access content for entertainment, which is great. But it will also allow your TV manufacturer — like Samsung, Sony, or LG — to potentially siphon data relating to your viewing habits, which is not great.
Opting out of this agreement is possible, but not always simple. Oftentimes you don’t even realize you’re opting in, with manufacturers slipping that agreement into the initial setup as you blindly select “yes” to every question on the screen just to get things going.
Using a streaming device obviously doesn’t solve the problem entirely, considering Roku, Apple, and Amazon are all probably trying to get their hands on your data as well. But using any one of these devices could resolve an even greater privacy issue.
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While they don’t appear to be very prevalent on the market today, smart TVs once frequently featured built-in cameras and microphones. Generally speaking, this allowed the user to make video calls from the comfort of their living room. Samsung even went as far as creating a motion-sensitive system that allowed users to roleplay as Dr. Strange while they controlled their televisions with hand gestures.
It had all the dressings of those remarkable advancements in technology we anticipated after getting a glimpse of the future from numerous science fiction movies of years past.
Except those movies rarely accounted for hackers, who are known for ruining all the fun.
The FBI warns that hackers can turn on your TV’s camera and microphone without your knowledge, allowing them to watch you from afar while you live your life without any of the privacy you think you have.
It isn’t clear when smart TVs with built-in cameras went out of fashion, but Samsung offered some advice on how to utilize the camera on one of its TVs as recently as 2018.
We can, with some degree of confidence, say that it would be difficult to find a smart TV with a built-in camera out on the market today.
We can also, with some degree of confidence, assume that there are still tons of smart TVs with built-in cameras sitting in living rooms all around the world. And with how infrequently people decide to go out and drop hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a new television, take a moment to realize how many people bought and have yet to replace camera-equipped smart TVs over the last decade.
Now consider how many of those televisions are sitting inside somebody’s bedroom, positioned for maximum viewing ability from the comfort of their bed. Where they sleep. And sometimes do other things.
There’s no reason to panic just yet. A simple piece of tape could help alleviate any concerns of being watched without your knowledge, but you could take it a step further by taking your TV offline. Not just because you may be spied on, but also because your TV could provide hackers with easier access to otherwise hardened devices.
“A bad cyber actor may not be able to access your locked-down computer directly, but it is possible that your unsecured TV can give him or her an easy way in the backdoor through your router,” the FBI stated late last year.
And while most tech devices are somewhat equipped to deal with this by undergoing regular software updates, TVs don’t receive the same sort of treatment.
Per Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports (via Digital Trends):
“Software updates are problematic. Staying on top of these updates costs manufacturers money that must be spent long after the product in question has been sold, eating away at profits. A company with a broad range of connected devices, each with its own slightly different version of that software, has even greater costs than those with a relatively homogenous product line. The result: Unlike the operating system for your laptop, your smart TV may only get one or two updates over its lifetime, if any, which over the course of a 10- to 15-year life span is insufficient.”
In short, the internet is great but also dangerous and it’s probably not a good idea to keep your TV connected to the WiFi.