- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
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10 years ago OP would’ve been labeled a schizo, now we just accept there’s microphones in everything
It’s sad isn’t it?
The walls are listening
PRISM leak was 13 years ago if you want to feel old yet, but then that was just a revelation about how prevelant mass surveillance is, it was Vault 7 in 2017 that detailed how built-in microphones in Smart TVs are used for spying, so that part would indeed be less than 10 years ago
This should be a web site or YT channel. How to remove such bits without bricking the item.
To be fair, OP didn’t claim that the remote wasn’t bricked…
It works! I was fully prepared for it to not work and explain to my wife why we need to order a new one, but no issue at all lmao
Could probably have measured its resistance, then put a plain resistor in its place.
Probably, but the nuclear option is always more fun
It’s fine, you’ve essentially replaced it with an infinite resistor. With the low currents that a microphone generate, theres just no signal going into the ADC now so it’s just silent.
Looking up which part to nuke took an hour, but anything to calm down my paranoid ass haha
FYI: Any speaker can and will be used as a microphone.
We’re really fucked aren’t we.
So just remove my sim card and unplug my firewall? Got it.
You would be surprised about the capabilities we had in 1970-80s for spying, with way way less technology than what we have today. At this point I think privacy is just a myth, we can literally use light to listen on people by having it bounce off of their windows and interpreting it back as sound. As a side note, rich people do use windows with a vibrating feature exactly to block this old method. There’s literally very little you can do if you are targeted by the government. (Except leaving the country, if possible)
At this point I think privacy is just a myth.
This is the cop in your head to kill. State surveillance capabilities are limited. While in theory it’s difficult to block targetted surveillance the key is to avoid being targetted by blending in.
James Micken’s model of mosad and not mossad threats apply. If a state turns its gaze on you, you will lose. However passive dragnet methods to try and decide who to turn the eye of Sauron on can be hidden from.
Step by step. Maybe true privacy is a myth, but every step closer is a win so take them.
More info on the light thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone
First to use, as far as I remember, were the Soviets in Cuba, gathering intelligence from US diplomats.
“intelligence from US” good luck with that
Thanks!
They can track you using your wifi router now, the shit is crazy
Even crazier is that Wi-Fi sensing has been around since around 2008. The wild part is how much more they can do with it now. With AI, they can use Wi-Fi signals to track movement, map out rooms, and even detect body positions in real time. It’s not literally seeing through walls, but it’s getting pretty damn close.
Yeah this is why I’ve long suspected this is the reason Google doesn’t let you shut off Bluetooth or wifi permanently easily anymore. Both resemble by default. And I think WiFi even stays on on android when you have it off to facilitate a feature to detect other networks or something.
If you’re willing to fortify your network in terms of security, I highly recommend building yourself a WiFi router or just buying a highly customizable one like MikroTik or alternatives as such. I think its easily the best defense for such cases.
I’m a network engineer, and I’ve built it 🤣
Privacy is not a myth, you just practice compartmentalization.
Instructions unclear. Burned house down.
Disable your speakers and run your audio out through an amp/speaker-bar that has no internet connection.
You might not be able to stop Jack Bauer from personally tracking you, but the sort of dragnet surveillance most people are worried about can still, for now, be mitigated with effort.
Depends. If we’re talking about malware targeting a TV OS, doing that will not really improve things. Another side note, a soundbar might include a microphone. (Most do)
Overall, it is a viable solution, but I wouldn’t bet on it at all if I were to go for full privacy.
You’d have to pair this with removing the mics (as shown above) and clipping the speaker leads (or just damaging the diaphragm enough by poking something through the speaker grille).
After that?
Not an audio engy but I image a lot of external amps are built to prevent back-feeding out through the line in.
Worst case use s/pdif, and you’ll know that the only thing going through that wire is good ol’ one-way pcm-digital audio.
Also its not impossible to find a sound bar that doesn’t have smart features yet. Even if it is, they tend to age way better than TV’s.
Personally?
My living room has 480i and 1080i tubes at around 26/27inches each.
My bedroom has a dumb 1080p panel.
If I need something prettier I use my higher-res computer monitor (no baked in OS, just firmware for display settings.)
The TVos is the malware.
Anything that has an electrical property change when vibrating can be a microphone.
This is a good reason to use old school passive speakers that need an amp and speaker wire.
Independent application ftw
Remember ye old life-hack that you can use earbuds as a microphone in a pinch?
Speakers and microphones are conceptually the same technology. If your tv can play sound then in theory it can be used by a malicious hacker or company to record sound.
Only the cone-magnet-coil-wires part is the same. All the electrical parts are different. There’s no way.
As far as i could research it is technically feasible though very impractical and low quality, way easier to sell people voice command features instead.
As i understand it also depends on whether its a “active” speaker or not, has an amplifier behind it.
Tvs usually use a speaker array, a bad actor company could design it in a way that one or two of those can be used to record sound in case the microphone is no longer detected.
An ad collector wouldn’t go that far on purpose, a state intelligence operator who is covertly part of the company might.
Just encase your TV room in lead so it can’t get a signal out. Ezpz.
In seriousness completely eliminating the possibility of surveillance is impossible, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it as hard as you’re willing to give up convenience for.
I have never once and never will talk to my remote control. So this one’s a no brainer. Gonna do my father in laws (rented) comcast remote next.
I have accidentally done this on my laptop when it thought my microphone was a speaker and played audio out of it.
Minidisc headphones did this. I did it as a project as a young child.
They’re the same.
Things will become more obscure and harder to disable. In fact since you own nothing and you’ll be happy, youre damaging government property and the police are already dispatched to take you to a totally cool and totally legal prison slave camp.
I’ll go down swinging with my hoarded DDR3 sticks
FYI most modern TVs have a second microphone actually in the display that’s actually used for the nefarious tracking and listening for assistant wake words to save remote battery life
Thanks for the tip. But what about microphones in tv’s, in I presume microwaves, washing machines, and everything else.
We need a way to jam up their ability to transmit the information back to Bezos’ house or whatever.
Faraday cage your home and send everything over wire with absolute control over what can leave your local network
There are paints that do this
unfortunately they are mediocre at best, and afiak are only in black due to the pigments that provide the conductive function (i believe it was graphite?).
also if improperly grounded you have a big antenna to absorb radio waves and shock everything it can touch…
i wad thinking more like a copper mesh inside the walls
I think ill just jeep using my LCD from 2007
Yeah, that’s probably the smart move
No, it’s not smart, that’s the point! ;)
Nice one lmao
I’m tempted to try this but I’m not sure how to identify the microphone or whether it would be in my remote or the TV itself. Is there some sort of guide on doing this?
While it’s not always the case, try to look for a 2x4 silver rectangle with a hole in it like the one on my finger. The casing is to isolate it from the nearby radio waves and the hole to let sound through.
That’s actually your finger? Interesting.
How did you find out there was a microphone? And how did you figure out which chip?
The TV advetises voice recognition in both the TV itself and the remote.
If you look at it, it’s likely going to be a 2x4mm silver rectangle with a small hole in it. Not always, but they mostly look like that.
There will almost always be a hole above it in the plastic remote housing.
MEMs microphones are a silver or black rectangle and it has to have a small hole in the top of the package https://www.st.com/en/mems-and-sensors/mems-microphones.html
Generally you can also just put a dab of hot glue over the top of the hole and it won’t be able to hear shit, you don’t necessarily have to desolder it, but it is the most effective.
Removed by mod
It has no way of sending any recordings if you don’t connect it to the Internet.
I have heard that some vendors support joining adhoc networks with others of the same brand. So if you have an LG TV (as an example) that you dont connect to the internet, but your neighbor has one that is connected, they could theoretically link up and bridge the unconnected one.
To be fair, this would have to be functionality included in the factory, and may not actually be a thing. But I remember reading something about it with LGs a few years ago, and it stuck with me.
Even if that wasn’t a thing yet, WiFi chips can be bought for less than $1 each in bulk now, and companies can put a monetary value on one person’s private data in the range of $1000 and up, so schemes like that are inevitabilities.
I used to look forward to global Internet coverage. While I still think it’s overall a good thing, I fear the day it’s ubiquitous and reliable enough that electronics are widely built to connect to it automatically without fallbacks or user input and make it nigh impossible to disable while keeping the device functional. We seem to be getting there sooner rather than later. I definitely feel less guilty about hoarding older hardware now.
What about LTE. I didn’t connect my new car to the internet. They did. 🙃
But what if
- your neighbor has open wifi?
- someone nearby has a connected device your tv can talk to?
- you sell the tv and it then gets connected?
Or just don’t connect your TV?
To the WiFi?
You are often forced to in order to set it up at all, the damage is already done if you disconnect it or VLAN quarantine it after that.
It doesn’t stop the TV from spying on you. GN just proved that it runs STT and records your conversations in plaintext and has the memory to store them for eternity. It also gets your location from scanning WiFi, Bluetooth, and any other devices in the band and geolocating based off of their data.
Then if you ever sell the TV, it will dump the data if they connect it, or somebody with the same brand smart TV moved in next door, it will use that TV’s hidden SSID hotspot to jump the airgap and dump all if its (likely time and position stamped) transcribed spying data to the servers.
Hardware fix is literally the only fix.
Can you help me understand why i got downvotes for posting the following comment in this very same community 2 days ago?
I am not saying the following happens, i think there is no proof it happens, but its technically doable.
They are capable of scanning for local networks and bluetooth devices which can be used to identify a location. (This part they definitely do)
If your neighbour has an lg tv, or the presence of the tv is extracted through your phone. Then they know where it is and they also know of any open/public wifi networks around.
The researchers from gamers nexus can connect to 2 (ssid) networks at once for some reason.
In theory a neighbours lg tv could
broadcast their wifi credentials to your tv toconnect to upload the data.There was a study just recently about exactly this, smart devices creating a rogue mesh and routing traffic across neighbors’ devices until they could phone home with all your data anyway
Could you link to it?
Maybe @caseyweederman was thinking about the Sidewalk Application Layer from Amazon Wikipedia page
I was hoping someone else would remember it, I’ve been looking for it too.
Humans are fickle and undependable and it is probably best to not take them seriously.
People want their decisions reinforced. Humans HATE when their time is wasted. I don’t know the comment, but I can speculate.
If you told a bunch of people that all of their hard work in isolating their TV was pretty much for nothing and it is quite possible for the TV to simply skip over the measures that they set. Then respond emotionally with “this person sounds paranoid, I did a good job, it will be good enough to protect me and my family” instead of reasoning through “would the company gain something from this that might cause them to implement this?”
I don’t know why people choose to bury their head in the sand, but also this technology isn’t CIA/NSA spy stuff. They aren’t building a new Amazon Sidewalk-esque mesh network. It is basic, cheap, single-point WiFi repeater technology that has been around for at least a decade and a half. Cheap, easy, profitable. Cars have been shown multiple times to do all of this too…
No you are not required to connect to WiFi to set it up.
I have seen complaints of this happening. It is possible they all lied, but it’d be kinda weird.
Damn I was not aware of that.
And hope no open networks are in range, ever. Or it will exfiltrate collected data.
Or another TV of the same manufacturer that has Internet access.
Keep hearing these claims got any proof about them?
I haven’t watched it all yet, but most of it is demonstrated on the latest Gamer Nexus video “216,000,000 Spy TVs | The LG Smart TV Problem”. In case you haven’t seen it yet:
Non YT link
Interesting timestamps:
00:16:33 - Intercepting LG’s Data Transfer
00:22:04 - Dark Patterns
00:46:19 - Plain Text Transcript and Ambient Conversation
Why not both?
Because one is unnecessary of you do the other?
Out of fucking principle, yes it’s not connected, but I won’t tolerate a mic in my remote. Besides, you have heard of them being able to use your neighbour’s unsafe WIFI if you have to act so smart, right?
What year is this that there is Open WiFi all over the place. Everything is encrypted now by default.
Xfinity broadcasts open wifi networks by default through their gateways and can be connected with authentication through Xfinity. It is entirely feasible to have a deal that allows them to connect through that network.
That is not my remote though
Another solution is to cover the mic with some thick gum that can be easily removed. Then it can be sold as it was later.
Don’t buy these kinds of TVs in the first place?
Sure thing, please look up what a 50 inch 4K dumb screen costs and report back to me.
Just about 4x the price of a similar TV. Although, said monitor also has a higher refresh rate.
Oh wait! There’s one under 2x the price :
“LG 50UL3J-M 50” UHD 4K Commercial Monitor"
Ok sorry that one is “smart” too.I know you’re being sarcastic but I don’t know what you’re getting out.
Do dumb screens exist ? If they’re 4x the price, surely my browsing preferences can’t be worth 3x the price ?
LG makes more money selling the data then they do the TV. The problem is this is not an LG issue they all do it.
That’s the thing, the average person’s value is waaay more than the discount you are getting. Imagine the screens without any smart bs built into them as being the real cost. Now you ADD the hardware and suddenly they cost 25-50%? If it wasn’t worth at least that (your data is worth more), the companies wouldn’t subsidize that much.
Do those screens exist though?
Its hard to believe a persons data is worth that much.
Price is irrelevant to me when most of my consumer electronics were acquired very cheap or free, usually with faults, that I repaired. I’m sure there are also plenty of older, still-working TVs available second hand that aren’t loaded with spy gadgets.
