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After luring customers with low prices, Amazon stuffs Fire TVs with ads
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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I have a nearly-dumb TV (chosen for that and never connected to the Internet) and a separate little Android TV box I got from AliExpress for 25 bucks were I only use Kodi.
The TV is maybe 4 years old, the little box maybe 1 year (I had a 10 year old similar thing before but it can't handle newer video formats so I switched).
Have yet to see a single Ad.
Mind you my setup is as is because I've long ago learned that you want your fast-changing-cheap-tech bits separate from your expensive-long-life stuff, so in this case I want my digital video file decoding hardware separate from the much more expensive large digital TV screen so that I can switch the former without paying a new of the - much more expensive - latter.
Yeah, so you may not be seeing ads, but there's a non-zero chance you have a botnet infested device on your network instead.
Is there a way to check if the little Android box you already have is one of these infected devices?
Here's the GitHub repo of a software developer that was one of the first to find this, and I think the first to make it really public. It has some info on how to tell and possible steps to do some cleanup.
https://github.com/DesktopECHO/T95-H616-Malware
There's been a lot of articles recently about those cheapo boxes being filled with spyware straight out the factory. Might wanna check that out.
I did.
It's not on the list.
deleted
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. But you’re correct—some TVs have been found to automatically connect to open wifi networks to phone home.
Yeah. I have a Vizio smart TV but each time you turn it on it acts 100% like a dumb tv until you press the smart button.
I have a seperate shitty little HTPC that's used for all the media and my brother uses his xbox.