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drnick1 | on: Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy?
> First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board

This. Never trust software switches. See my other reply for what I suggest instead of "streaming boxes" that aren't any better than the TV firmware.

kazinator | parent | next
So you think that if the TV doesn't have your Wi-Fi password, it surreptititously turns on Wi-Fi and runs cracking software to obtain it anyway?
ethanj8011 | root | parent | next
I think the more logical concern would be that it would wait until it could find any potential unsecured wifi to use. I live in an apartment building and there a few wifi access points that I can reach from my apartment with no security. Though one of them appears to be an air conditioner??
kazinator | root | parent
Say the TV finds such an access point and uses it. It phones home and so now the manufacturer now knows that such and such serial # TV is located in that neighborhood.

They still need to tie it to you. If you've not given it a shred of personal information, it has to be fingerprinting via surreptitious audio/video recording, or else by obtaining the purchase info from the retailer (like the name and billing address from your credit card) and matching that by serial number (which would have to be recorded during purchase).

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wl | root | parent | next
Not that I have any evidence it's happening, but it'd be more likely for TV manufacturers to partner with ISPs that offer public WiFi using the access points they rent to their customers.
wolvoleo | root | parent | next
No but things like Amazon sidewalk exist
quacktopia | root | parent
The low bandwidth always on kindle modems could also be feasibly built into TVs for telemetry, and may be cheaper than the money they could get from selling the data.
jellobyte | root | parent | next
Thank you. This is exactly what I was thinking reading people who think you need to do more than simply never connect it to your wifi.
_dain_ | root | parent
it's not just your wifi you have to worry about. neighbour can have insecure wifi. or deliberately open ones like coffee shops, free municipal hotspots, etc.
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mmooss | root | parent
There are available IoT networks it could use, though I don't think all of them run over Wifi.
intrasight | parent
Honest question. Do projectors also suffer?
hedora | root | parent | next
The one we have is even worse. It won't really work well outside of things like airplay or chromecast, and those require wifi. It was extremely cheap though.

(It has an HDMI port, but it's clearly a second class citizen in the menus, etc. Default to HDMI on power up is intentionally broken. It's also intentionally designed to turn into a brick if we ever lose the remote. At boot, it puts a screen up saying to press a button on the remote if you want it to display anything else, and that screen never times out. If you plug in an HDMI input, it says "HDMI input detected; press OK.". There's no "OK" button on the projector itself. You have to press the OK button on the remote.)

MrDrMcCoy | root | parent | next
Not from privacy issues, but all the typical ones from projectors never went anywhere: low brightness, high heat, low maximum operating lifetime, fan noise, and hard to set up (impossible in some places).
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aDyslecticCrow | root | parent | next
Faar less. A larger fraction of projectors remain dumb HDMI to light converters. Tis been my own plan if i settle on wanting a tv.
sudonem | root | parent
If it has any kind of in-built smart TV style OS - then yes.