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?
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??
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).
I wouldn't be surprised if they did audio fingerprinting. But even if they don't, the third parties who are buying the data can easily re-identify the users by doing data fusion with other sources (smartphone location data from other vendors)
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.
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.
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.
That sounds like a TV manufacturer is going to be having one hell of a lawsuit if they're breaking into other peoples wifi networks.
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There are available IoT networks it could use, though I don't think all of them run over Wifi.