Back in my day we called this malware
Adware is a form of malware. Malware is a broad term that encompasses a lot of other types of software. Adware, bloatware, spyware, etc are all forms of malware.
Like someone saying they like metal music. It’s a very broad term. What kind of metal? Thrash metal? Death metal? Black metal? Power metal? Nu metal? Prog metal? Etc…
LG is starting to become indistinguishable from malware.
Their TV software includes residential proxies (your network becomes the proxy), and gets sold to AI scrapers and others. Imagine if that proxy gets used to download CSAM, used for hacking, or gets your household banned from Google?
Samsung phone software is cancer and auto installs whatever the fuck ads and games they want. They installed forced ads onto their fucking fridges.
Also worth noting Dell and Alienware do this too according to Wikipedia.
When the fuck did this become okay? We need to drive these companies out of business for this. They need to get sued for this. In what world is adding unremovable adware legal, how does that not violate the computer misuse and hacking laws?
When the fuck did this become okay? We need to drive these companies out of business for this.
We would need to drive every computer company on earth out of business. They all do this. It’s not one or two, it’s all of them in a race to the bottom.
Yes, do that. Drive them out, I want to hear the lamentations of their accountants.
Things started going downhill when Lenovo wasn’t fined into oblivion in the 2010s for putting malicious spyware on the laptops they sold their customers. And I mean actual literal spyware, as in “installs a root certificate and decrypts and reads all your ‘secure’ internet traffic, ostensibly so it can place random ads in it”. While also leaving gaping holes for attackers to use, of course, but letting a random program written by someone with ties to Israeli intelligence install backdoors throughout their customer base earned Lenova slightly more money so it’s all good!
And that wasn’t even the first or last time Lenovo have done something like that. They just… got a free pass, and this type of thing gradually became the norm. It’s infuriating.
It started before that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
The frustrating thing about that is how they didn’t even slow down with their bullshit after that scandal, and some of the most hated DRM in recent history have a direct lineage from Sony:
- SecuROM, a widely hated DRM that limited how many times you could install a game, required online check-ins or it’d lock you out of playing, and blocked common IT tools while running, was also developed by Sony.
- Denuvo, which obfuscates and encrypts the game executable after scattering DRM checks throughout, adding extra CPU overhead and lowering game performance, was later produced by the same (former, now independent) SecuROM team.
Yeah, I was going to post this if nobody else did. At least Sony was forced to acknowledge the issue and issue a patch. But then the patch was such a bad bodge (it didn’t even remove the rootkit, and introduced more vulnerabilities) that the punishment wasn’t anywhere near enough.
Does Lenovo do this on Linux OS’? Cause I only saw the Lenovo crapware on Windows 10/11 before I switched to Fedora.
Just so I am clear, everything I have read about the residential proxies in TVs (heavily leaning towards LG and Samsung) has been that they are baked into the shady apps the smart TV platforms allow you to install, not that LG or Samsung are directly running said proxies. This is obviously still very bad, but it isn’t LG or Samsung doing it as much as not preventing it in any way, which they obviously should be doing. This is just what I am aware of though, do you have any additional info/links that point to them doing it directly? I’d really like to know, as I have two LG TVs. I have one locked down to an internal subnet and just use Jellyfin, but the family still likes using Netflix on the other one and I’d like to know if the proxies are essentially unavoidable rather than being tied to those shitty “ad free” games.
If it comes built-in, or it’s installed through their app store, then they should be held responsible for whatever happens.
I don’t disagree at all, but it is still a distinction that should be made clear, especially for people that already own such devices.
Okay, that is way different than what I understood as the built in apps have them
Thanks for mentioning that
Sure no problem. I just found a link that talks about it if you were curious to read a bit more. https://spur.us/blog/smart-tv-apps-residential-proxy-sdks
These are the same SDKs uses in a lot of PC and mobile games too. This explains why bot/scraper traffic has exploded in the past couple of years. My small company’s site gets well over a million hits a day, about 4% of that traffic is valid. It’s total bullshit.
Too many people just don’t give a fuck and that’s what frustrates me most. The only windows computer I have in this home is my work one. Because I need it for work. Any time I use the other ones it’s so clean, fast, ad free. Less bullshit.
My only real anxiety over what’s happening here is my nest speakers and smart tv. Both are connected to the internet but they’re vlan’d off.
There was a post yesterday about pine speakers, please let them be good…
/rant
This is why I think remote Ethernet jacks should be a thing. Like the same as those HDMI input multiplexers, but just to connect and disconnect a device from a wired connection. Glue that shit to the bottom of the remote. Boom. Parents get to rot their brains in front of the screens just like how they warned you not to do decades ago, and they get to enjoy doing something to stay “safe from viruses”
You can do this with some firewalls, switches, and access points. Opnsense has timed firewall capabilities.
I have one on a schedule here for my TV. I can also toggle it from my phone.
I know but I mean a literal 1 in 1 out female-female Ethernet box that is triggered by a dumb remote. I err on the side of dumber is better.
Dumb switch on a smart plug.
I thought that is what condoms were supposed to be for
I once came across a wiki on which people maintained a list of “safe” products. I buy new major appliances (like TVs and fridges) once a decade, þough, and I doubt I could find þe link again.
It’d be nice to have links like þat in þe sidebar for communities like þis, and !privacy. Reddit subs used to be pretty good about þat.
What is up with your “th”'s?
I’m guessing they want to bring the Thorn(?) in to common use?
Its usually mostly used as a phonetic symbol for the “th” sound.
Yeah, I didn’t like it at first, but then I remembered that I already think English is a bad language on the spelling side of things and that would reduce ambiguity, so now I support it, at least in spirit. Though the problems with English are way deeper than “th” not having its own symbol.
For me, it’s a tongue out
:þ
This happened on both my Windows systems! I thought I caught a virus but there was a Reddit thread saying it came from Windows Update. This should be against Microsoft’s policies.
I will not be buying anything LG in the future because of this. It’s a shame because I have enjoyed their monitors.
How, though?
Its because of Windows, right?
The monitor didnt insert malware?
Monitor requests Windows OS to install monitor company’s software, Windows installs whatever they want.
Not quite, Windows detects the monitor being attached and goes “Oh? What software goes with this?” and downloads the package provided by LG.
The monitor doesn’t say “Hey, I want you to download this”, Windows does that on it’s own.
Wait, since when does Windows install apps and not just device drivers?!
Apps being bundled with drivers is not that new. I swore off Razer hardware years ago because their fucking keyboard decided to install a bloated app alongside it - during OS installation as well! A blocking installer, fucked up my unattended install.
Okay that’s a funny one tho, microsoft makes a bad features and can’t even code it properly lmaoo
Pretty sure windows has supported installing drivers that include program installs since windows 7. Razor mice also do the same thing where it auto installs the control software.
Exactly the problem!
This exchange is very polite, I think the truth is closer to an encounter with the Borg.
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The others are right, but it is possible for hardware to have installation software embedded. It’s not as common now, but consumer Dell printers about 10 years ago (and probably others, but that’s what I ran into) had drivers embedded in an internal flash ROM. You switched between using the printer as a flash drive and accessing the printer directly using the buttons on the front of the printer.
Many modern motherboards have that built in to install the manufacturer’s software, which in turn would download the latest BIOS drivers, etc. for that board.
Usually enabled by default, and after installing once, the setting in the BIOS gets disabled so it doesn’t prompt to reinstall on every boot.
My brand new Asrock X870E board I installed last week did that.
I get why they do it, but I also hate it.
Ah yeah I got this, I just set the app not to launch at computer startup. Thankfully Linux is unaffected and that’s what I almost always use.
