The insane amount of requests my LG tv has sent since last Friday
We recently blacklisted some of the IP’s that our LG tv was sending data to. I can’t believe the sheer number of requests logged in just 1 week! And what’s worse is LG is even denying it now
70 replies
This is not an acurste way to see howvmany requests go out. Since it is blocked it well keep trying since it thinks there is something wrong.
Even so, that’s an insane amount of retries! I guess I would have thought it would retry a few times and end up in a DLQ or something. But perhaps it’s normal for IoT
Ehh, I know the software where I work makes endless attempts to connect too. That isn't malicious, just shit. 4 year later its still trying again every 30 seconds. Logs are fucking massive.
If you blacklisted the IPs, most of those are probably retries.
I think it's time ya'll start reading books again. TV sucks anyways.
Yes but books require some energy remaining in the body after work and family. A tv is great for exhausted people after their daily slave job.
I read books on vacations simply because I have the energy and focus for it then. Rarely do it at home.
LOT to be said for that.
Paper ones that don't track everything you read. Old fashion paper. Browse your fav local bookstore. Or hit the library. Walk out with little stack of books. Read 'em over weeks or months. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Audio books for me. And no bobidy is tracking.
How can you be so sure about not being tracked?
Use a cd player
Incredible to see them thinking they have any deniability.
oh fuck off with this.
Those numbers may be a little higher because you are block listing them. When it is unsuccessful, it keeps trying. Still crazy though. Have you tried simply disconnecting from your network and turning off the WiFi? I blocked mine entirely through my router and then turned off the WiFi at the TV. My overall PiHole block rate dropped significantly after that.
https://youtu.be/6IFVTcM28KA?is=-5PlYKsh41oXvLsn
Even as a dumb TV it is still listening to everything.
Yep. Doesn’t stop it from doing nefarious things, just stops it from sending it anywhere. Could always move to digital signage.
That’s true, and yeah still crazy. No, we tried this first just out of curiosity and because our kids use the apps on the television. But just completely dumbing it down will be the next step. I’m just disappointed, man. It was a new tv
Some set top boxes are little better. Even then, some the apps get you. Netflix is awful with tracking.
And Tubi from what I can tell! But not surprised by either
Tubi is pure slop. They openly admit they are too privacy-invasive for EU laws lol
Check the settings of the Tubi app. You will still see a lot of requests to load the ads even if they are not personalised anymore.
rule #1 of connected TV: NO connection
We screwed the pooch on that one!
Never too late for a factory reset and a Chromecast.
C'mon, trading LG for a fucking Chromecast? You kidding right?
You guys are funny to think that any streaming device has any sort of ad capability is not doing the same exact type of thing.
Also this guy thinking that that's a lot of requests being made by a single device in a week period. That's really not that many requests especially when things like ads are being served up on the device or it's got to make a request to be able to pull down updates and different things like that which it does at least ones have not several times a day as well.
Chromecast doesn't have a microphone so isn't listening to your conversations.
But sure, get a cheap PC from Craigslist and use that.
It's funny that you're only concerned with that aspect of the LG. The request that this guy's talking about for the most part are not going to be microphone recordings or anything like that. It's literally just fetching ads back and forth if you look at the actual pages that it's trying to grab. And that's exactly what Chromecast and pretty much any of the other streaming services are doing is driving ads and fetching them back and forth.
My LGTV from 2008 still works. I'm not sure that it knows what the internet is.
My 2013 LG TV didn't have an updated firmware so it's just a piece of shit UI that doesn't serve ads.
Rule 0: don't get any TV. Just get a office projector, paint your wall white or get a white cloth, get some nice sounding speakers and plug your PC to it.
Why would you want a white wall. You want ahitry contrast.
Or, you know, dont connect your TV to the Internet.
There's TVs that can mesh together with other TVs until they find one that's actually connected to the Internet, you might not connect your tv to WiFi but your neighbor does
Show me. I want a story about this. Never heard from it except from the comments. In the 2 hour long video they didn't even say it did this.
Use your Libreelec Raspberry Pi.
When im forced to buy a new TV, I will make sure it works with no network connection at all, or I'm not buying it.
I have a LG soundbar that is connected to WiFi (for AirPlay) but has been blocked at the router level since we bought it. It has been here for years and has never stopped screaming into the void. Hundreds of times per day.
Samsung does not fall back, my tv it is by far the device that makes more dns requests ar home
Disconnect it from the internet and use your own box or stick.
I can only recommend everybody that has the option for it to run adguard home as a DNS server.
It if you already have a PiHole that can do the same trick. Adguard has support for all DNS protocols and forces itself into windows and android via DoH and DoQuick.
A friend of mine maintains a list of blocklist here: https://github.com/ppfeufer/adguard-filter-list
I run PiHole too, but note Adguard/PiHole do not block DNS over HTTP. If these Smart TV's want to get nasty, and they already have beyond expectations, they could employ that tech or hardcore IP addresses.
If the Smart TV uses and hardcoded http DNS server, that must be blocked directly, sure. But that scenario is very unlikely.
They already do this. They have fallbacks, but is documented that they do this.
There are blocklists for that also. https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists#bypass
Seems like it might be easiest to set up a dummy server. Let the device think it reached home.
I would think that a CA certificate may be hardcoded? Only way it to block it. Faking it maybe with rooting. And then you can gut it also
I run it on my GLiNet router. Are these domains on the default list?
I don't think so. But this one should help: https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists#native
Can't you just block the MAC address in your router? Or does the family like to use the built in apps?
We mainly tried this first out of curiosity, and because the LG tv has some parental controls we use for the kids! But gonna have to find an alternative
Tbf this is far from an "insane" amount for a week.
The request numbers are on the far right, not on the left.
Gotta pull that wifi mobile out.
Can a pi Hole fix this? Using a Samsung smart TV
It can help, but the only thing that's guaranteed to stop data exfiltration is disconnecting the WiFi hardware completely
While disconnecting it (wifi and copper) completely, solves the problem, it is not the only thing that's guaranteed to work. Putting it in an isolated VLAN (or SSID for that matter) and closing down the firewall helps, too. While this certainly requires more skill than disconnecting wifi, it still allows to connect to jellyfin or the like without using additional hardware like chromecast.
You can fix it by disconnecting the internet and plugging in your own devices.
Depends, it can autoconnect silently via open wifi networks or other tv's/iot devices that are friendly. Shitty companies will do anything to get their hand on as much data as they can.
I don't think LG does that, however you should make sure the Wi-Fi switch is off (don't just click forget) and if you're paranoid, you can physically remove the Wi-Fi board.
LG very much tries to connect to random Wifi networks to leak your data, Gamers Nexus talks about it in their recent video.
Here's an arstechnica article if you don't got 2 hrs to spare 😅
Excerpt:
It scanned for other devices on the currently connected Wi-Fi network.
Seconding that rec to disconnect wifi hw.
Some TVs have been found storing audio locally, then sending it if they ever get access to a network. Which can happen accidentally.
Tests also showed the sets can capture microphone audio with the screen off — they then upload data once reconnected to the internet.
Yes, but how many open Wi-Fi signals are around your home? If you have open Wi-Fi signals that are around your home, then that's also an issue.
What your neighbours do is out of your control, especially if you consider the averge person living next door doesnt think about (or understand) wifi past the very first time they type the password in "to make the internet work".
This is most of the companies out there at this point have created secure connections on almost everything. Very few connections out there are actually unsecured at this point in time. They've made them dumb easy so that way they can mother them.
I think so.
I use NextDNS on my other devices but not on the LG untill now and we use it only for regular tv channels and a android mediabox via hdmi ...
Does it help if I put Nextdns on all of them or apps like Netguard? And then block stuff?
Turn off the Wi-Fi in the settings on the LG. The antenna will still work.
The regular channels are "cable" which changed from coax to utp and a provider box ... Oh wait am I confusing then streambox from my telecom provider with the LG onboard stuff ...
That streambox is just HDMI so it will work perfecrly with the LG's Wi-Fi off.