Do you have links to blogs that show this happening, I see plenty of hearsay, but I know my LG doesn’t attempt to my honeypot wifi, I’d love to see proof.
Samsung (Dacor) discloses this behavior in their fridge manual; it says it will mesh with Samsung TVs to better target ads.
I’m not about to buy a Samsung set to find out what it actually does in practice. The fridge has deep learning object classifiers and internal cameras; I assume that is a big part of its ad targeting capability.
Note that the fridge has demand response / energy use time shifting features that don’t work unless it is connected to the internet.
You know all those stories about weird little shops run by suspicious characters but filled with incredible items that end up being cursed. That's every single shop right now. All of our technology is cursed. They will bring you great things, as promised, but always at some hidden price because those items exist to serve a dark master.
Maybe the targeting works the other way around. Those refrigerators have cameras. Maybe a little bit of machine learning to figure out what you buy and play targeted ads based on what's in your fridge or what used to be in your fridge but isnt currently.
>demand response / energy use time shifting features that don’t work unless it is connected to the internet.
I don't understand. What extra info does it need from the internet to keep the food at the right temperature, other than just the current temperature inside the fridge?
Maybe not straight up arrested, but I think I recall a case in the past where legal action was taken over someone using a restaurant's free WiFi everyday while not being a customer (he used it in his car in the parking lot). Like the network is open but technically you need permission to connect to it (a sign at the airport saying that free WiFi is available at this SSID, or the restaurant stating that WiFi is available to all paying customers counts as permission). Obviously very few of these cases will be prosecuted, but I would be very concerned if my smart devices were connecting to open networks automatically without my consent.
Appallingly, this isn't enough to stop the ads. Many TVs will proactively scan for open networks and connect to them.