My Television Was Supposed to Stream Movies, Not Rent My Internet Connection to Strangers

I remember when buying a television was a remarkably simple transaction. I gave a store money, the store gave me a large rectangular object, and that object showed me whatever happened to be on channel 7. The television did not need my email address. It did not ask me to create a password containing one uppercase letter, two numbers, a hieroglyph, and the forgotten name of my first pet. It did not recommend software updates at the precise moment I wanted to watch something. Most importantly, it did not quietly audition my home internet connection for a second career.

Those were primitive times, apparently.

Today, my television is “smart,” which means it can perform dozens of tasks I never asked it to perform while occasionally forgetting how to do the one thing televisions have been doing since the twentieth century: display a picture.

Now Samsung says it is banning smart TV apps that can share users’ internet connections with strangers. The company has restricted new app submissions containing residential proxy technology and says it is working to identify and remove existing apps that include it.

That is reassuring in the same way it is reassuring when a restaurant announces that it has finally prohibited employees from storing raw chicken in the bathroom.

I am glad the policy exists.

I am somewhat concerned that the policy had to be invented.

According to research from Norwegian cybersecurity company Mnemonic, some apps available on Samsung smart TVs contained software capable of turning the television into a residential proxy node. In plain English, that means someone else could route internet traffic through the connection in my house, making their activity appear to originate from my residential IP address.

My TV, the device I bought to watch documentaries and repeatedly abandon prestige dramas after three episodes, could become a tunnel for a stranger’s internet activity.

I did not realize my living room had opened a branch office.

My Television Has Apparently Been Networking Behind My Back

A residential proxy allows a third party to send internet requests through an ordinary household connection. Instead of a website seeing traffic coming from a commercial data center, it sees an ordinary residential IP address. That traffic looks like it came from a regular person sitting at home, perhaps innocently searching for a lasagna recipe or wondering whether the actor in a commercial used to be on a sitcom.

This can have legitimate uses. Residential proxies can help people bypass censorship, conduct market research, verify advertising, gather publicly available information, or access geographically restricted content. The technology itself is not automatically criminal.

Unfortunately, “not automatically criminal” is not the standard I use when deciding what my television should be doing at three in the morning.

Cybersecurity professionals have warned that residential proxy networks can also conceal attacks, data theft, automated scraping, and other activity by making suspicious traffic resemble traffic from a normal household. The stranger using the connection remains somewhere else. My IP address gets to wear the name tag.

That feels like lending someone my car while allowing them to replace the license plate with mine.

Maybe they are going to the grocery store.

Maybe they are fleeing the scene of something that will eventually require me to explain myself.

Either way, I would prefer to be consulted with slightly more seriousness than a single prompt presented while I am holding a remote and trying to make Pac-Man move.

Researchers at Spur Intelligence previously scanned 6,038 apps across Samsung’s Tizen platform and LG’s webOS ecosystem. They reported finding confirmed residential proxy software in 2,058 of them. According to Spur, approximately 26.9 percent of the examined Samsung apps and 42.5 percent of the examined LG apps contained proxy components.

Those are not “one unfortunate developer had a strange weekend” numbers. Those are ecosystem numbers.

When more than a quarter of the apps on a platform contain technology capable of monetizing household internet connections, I no longer think I am browsing an app store. I think I am walking through a digital flea market where every third vendor is asking whether I would like to rent out my electrical outlets.

Pac-Man Was Apparently Eating More Than Dots

One of the apps examined by Mnemonic researcher Harrison Sand was a Pac-Man game offered on Samsung smart TVs. This was not some mysterious file downloaded from a website with seventeen pop-ups and a button labeled “TOTALLY SAFE.” Samsung reportedly featured the game in an Editor’s Choice section.

Editor’s Choice.

That phrase used to suggest that somebody had examined the available options, exercised judgment, and selected something worthy of additional attention. Apparently, it can also mean, “We enjoyed the maze, and nobody looked too closely at the networking behavior.”

Sand rooted a Samsung television so he could inspect its internal activity and observe the data flowing in and out. He found that the Pac-Man app contained residential proxy code associated with Bright Data, a company that sells access to residential proxy networks.

The proxy did not immediately activate when the game opened. The user first encountered a consent screen. Accepting it allowed the software to use the television’s connection for web indexing in exchange for an ad-free experience. Once activated, the proxy could continue operating in the background even after the user closed the game. Deleting the app would stop it.

That detail matters. This was not necessarily a case in which every user was silently enrolled without ever seeing a disclosure. A prompt existed.

But the presence of a prompt does not magically transform confusion into informed consent.

People click “accept” because modern life has trained us to treat digital permission screens as tollbooths. We do not read them because we would never accomplish anything else. Every device, app, website, automobile, toothbrush, thermostat, and refrigerator wants us to review several pages of legal language before granting us access to the feature printed on the box.

Consent has become a ceremonial tap performed to make the screen disappear.

If an app asks whether it can use my connection for “web indexing,” do I understand that someone else may send internet traffic through my IP address? Do I understand that the activity may continue after I close the app? Do I understand who can purchase access, what they might do with it, how the customers are screened, what technical restrictions exist, and what happens if those restrictions fail?

Or do I think, “Fine, whatever. My nephew wants to play Pac-Man”?

Calling that informed consent requires a heroic interpretation of the word “informed.”

There is also the household problem. A television is not necessarily controlled by the person who owns the internet account. Children use it. Guests use it. Relatives use it. A person staying for the weekend can install an app and accept a prompt without understanding that they are making a decision about someone else’s network.

The television may be shared, but the consequences are delivered to one household connection.

My cousin should not be able to turn my IP address into a commercial asset because he wanted an ad-free screensaver.

“Free” Has Developed a Fascinating New Definition

The business model is easy to understand once I scrape away the cheerful language.

Developers want to make money. Users dislike paying for novelty TV apps. Users also dislike advertisements. Residential proxy companies offer developers another source of revenue: embed a software development kit, obtain the user’s consent, and allow the household connection to become part of a proxy network.

The app remains free.

All it costs is something the user may not have realized had economic value.

That is the modern internet’s favorite magic trick. A company announces that a service is free, then quietly identifies some fragment of my life it can package, measure, sell, rent, analyze, or feed into an algorithm.

My attention pays for social media.

My behavior pays for recommendation engines.

My location pays for advertising.

Now my television can apparently offer my internet connection as tribute so I do not have to look at a banner ad while playing a forty-six-year-old arcade game.

At this rate, the next free weather app will finance itself by subletting my driveway.

Proxy companies argue that users receive value in exchange for participating and that customers are screened. Bright Data told Spur that its network depends on consent, accountability, customer vetting, and approved uses. Other providers described technical controls intended to block access to private devices and local network addresses.

Those protections matter. Responsible operators should have strict controls, and legitimate proxy networks are not equivalent to botnets built from infected devices.

But I am still left with the same basic question: why was this business model allowed to spread through television app stores on such a large scale?

A smart TV is not an appropriate place to conduct a nuanced negotiation over the commercial use of a household IP address. The interface is built for choosing Netflix, adjusting the volume, and spending twenty minutes deciding what to watch before falling asleep.

It is not built for evaluating network architecture.

The Television Is the Perfect Accomplice

Smart televisions are ideal proxy hosts precisely because we do not think about them as computers.

I know my phone is a computer. I treat my laptop like a computer. I occasionally check their apps, review permissions, install security updates, and become suspicious when the battery suddenly drains.

My television feels like furniture.

It sits against the wall. It is always plugged in. It is connected to the same network as my phones, computers, cameras, speakers, printer, and whatever other internet-enabled object I bought during a temporary lapse in judgment. I may keep the television for seven or ten years. I rarely inspect what it does in the background because there is no obvious dashboard showing me that information.

If an app uses additional bandwidth, I may not notice.

If it runs after I close it, I may not notice.

If a developer changes remotely loaded code, I may not notice.

The television does not become warm and whisper, “Just so you know, somebody in another country is borrowing your IP address.”

It continues displaying a peaceful aquarium.

That is part of what makes the research so disturbing. Some smart TV apps are essentially thin shells that load their real content from external servers. The code initially reviewed by the platform may be minimal, while the behavior delivered later can change.

Sand summarized the problem elegantly: what the platform reviewed is not necessarily what the television eventually runs.

That is a major weakness. An app store can inspect the package a developer submits, approve it, and place it in front of users. But if the app retrieves important functionality from a remote server, the developer may alter what it does without submitting an entirely new version for review.

The front door has a security guard.

The entire back wall is a curtain.

Mnemonic warned that a relatively simple server-side change could potentially activate proxy functionality across huge numbers of televisions. Some developers claimed enormous installation totals, although those figures should be treated as developer-provided claims rather than independently verified counts.

Even without accepting the largest numbers, the architecture is troubling. The issue is not merely what reputable providers say they are doing today. It is what the system makes technically possible tomorrow.

Good intentions are not a security boundary.

A promise is not a firewall.

Samsung Deserves Credit, but I Am Not Throwing a Parade

Samsung told TechCrunch that it had already restricted new app registrations incorporating proxy functions. The company said it was implementing strict developer policies banning residential proxy software development kits and working to identify and remove apps already available in its store.

That is the correct response.

Samsung should ban the software, remove affected apps, improve its review process, examine remotely loaded behavior, and prevent developers from using televisions as invisible infrastructure for unrelated businesses.

I genuinely appreciate that the company is acting.

I also refuse to frame this as an inspiring corporate rescue story.

Samsung is not a passerby who noticed a dangerous situation and bravely intervened. Samsung operates the platform. It reviews the apps. It distributes the apps. It recommends some of the apps. It sells the devices that bring those apps into our homes.

When the landlord finally removes the raccoon from the ventilation system, I am grateful. I still want to know why the raccoon had an employee badge.

The fact that researchers had to root televisions, unpack apps, analyze network traffic, and publicly document the scale of the problem before platform rules hardened tells me that consumer protection remains painfully reactive.

Technology companies love to describe their security programs as continuous, proactive, sophisticated, layered, and industry-leading. Yet important safeguards often appear only after an independent researcher walks into the room carrying evidence and asks why the lamp is uploading data to Bulgaria.

LG announced a similar crackdown after Spur’s research found extensive proxy software across its app ecosystem. Amazon already prohibits apps that facilitate third-party proxy services, and Roku has reportedly blocked similar technology.

This tells me the problem was not impossible to anticipate. Different platforms simply drew the line at different times.

Samsung has now drawn it.

Good.

Please use permanent ink.

Smart Devices Have Become Tiny Corporate Fiefdoms

The larger issue is not limited to proxy software. It is the steady erosion of ownership.

When I buy a television, I supposedly own the physical object. Yet the manufacturer still controls the operating system, app store, advertising surface, data practices, software support, available services, and features that may appear or disappear after purchase.

I own the screen.

The corporation remains governor of everything behind it.

The word “smart” has become shorthand for “the manufacturer would like an ongoing relationship with you.” A smart appliance is never satisfied with being purchased. It wants an account. It wants updates. It wants telemetry. It wants permissions. It wants to show promotions. It wants to join an ecosystem. It wants me to agree to revised terms while I am holding a bowl of popcorn.

The old television worked for me.

The smart television participates in a complicated arrangement involving me, the manufacturer, app developers, advertisers, streaming companies, data firms, proxy providers, and several legal departments.

I am apparently the least informed member of this arrangement, which is impressive considering I paid for the television and put it in my house.

We have normalized the idea that every object must become a platform. A platform must have apps. Apps must be monetized. Monetization must happen continuously. If users resist subscriptions and advertising, companies search for another asset hidden in the relationship.

There is always another layer available for extraction.

Maybe it is viewing data.

Maybe it is voice recordings.

Maybe it is screen activity.

Maybe it is the home screen itself, transformed into a billboard.

Maybe it is the internet connection carrying all of it.

The device is never finished making money from me.

The purchase was merely our introduction.

I Would Like My Dumb Television Back

There is a reason people increasingly ask for televisions without complicated software, accounts, advertisements, and app stores. Unfortunately, truly “dumb” televisions are harder to find in the consumer market, especially at larger sizes and competitive prices.

Smart features can subsidize hardware. Manufacturers and their partners can continue earning revenue after the sale through advertising, data, promoted content, and commercial relationships.

That may help explain why a smart television can sometimes cost less than a comparable professional display without the same consumer software. The cheaper price is not necessarily generosity. The device may be designed to generate value long after leaving the store.

I understand the economics.

I just wish the receipt were honest.

Television: $699.

Ongoing promotional access to your attention: included.

Possible measurement of your viewing habits: see privacy policy.

Future software features: subject to change.

Home screen clutter: complimentary.

Chance that a novelty app tries to turn your internet connection into a commercial proxy node: apparently higher than anyone would have guessed.

If companies insist on selling televisions as platforms, then they must accept the responsibilities of platform operators. That means enforcing strict rules before harmful business models become widespread. It means examining what apps actually do after installation. It means requiring plain-language disclosures. It means giving users persistent controls instead of one-time prompts. It means auditing high-risk software development kits and treating remotely loaded code as a serious security concern.

It also means acknowledging that people do not experience a television consent screen the same way a network engineer reads technical documentation.

Human beings are tired.

We are interrupted constantly. We are asked to agree to terms everywhere. We use shared devices. We rush through setup screens. We press the bright button because dinner is getting cold and the children are yelling.

Any permission system that ignores those realities is legally tidy and practically dishonest.

What I Am Doing With My Own Television

I am not throwing my smart TV into a lake. That would be environmentally irresponsible, financially painful, and unlikely to improve the lake.

I am, however, reviewing the apps installed on it.

I am deleting games, screensavers, utilities, and other software I no longer recognize or use. I am paying particular attention to obscure apps whose only apparent purpose is displaying a clock, aquarium, slideshow, casual game, or other simple content that never needed an elaborate business model.

I am checking for system updates.

I am reconsidering whether the television needs every network-enabled feature activated.

I am also reminding everyone in my household that an “accept” button can make decisions affecting more than the person holding the remote.

None of these steps replaces Samsung’s responsibility. Consumers cannot reverse-engineer every app before installing it. I should not need a cybersecurity laboratory beside the couch to determine whether a game is behaving like a game.

Security advice often becomes a way of transferring responsibility downward. Companies build opaque systems, platforms approve questionable software, developers hide complex behavior behind cheerful prompts—and then ordinary people are told to “practice good digital hygiene.”

I am running out of hygiene.

I have strong passwords. I use multifactor authentication. I install updates. I avoid suspicious attachments. I check permissions. I scrutinize links. I cover cameras. I distrust QR codes in parking lots. Now I must interrogate the aquarium screensaver.

At some point, the people manufacturing the maze must stop blaming consumers for failing to navigate it perfectly.

A Television Should Know Its Place

Samsung’s ban is a welcome correction. Residential proxy technology does not belong hidden inside casual smart TV apps, especially when participation can continue after the app closes and the household has little practical ability to inspect the traffic.

If a company wants to rent access to my internet connection, it should ask me in language so direct that misunderstanding becomes nearly impossible:

“Would you like strangers who pay us to route their internet activity through your television and home IP address while we compensate the app developer?”

That would slow down the acceptance rate.

Funny how clarity does that.

Companies prefer phrases like “web indexing,” “resource sharing,” and “ad-free experience” because those terms sound clean, technical, and harmless. They turn a serious transaction into background noise. They encourage me to think I am exchanging a minor permission for a minor convenience.

I am not.

My residential IP address helps represent my household online. Traffic emerging from it can affect rate limits, fraud systems, security alerts, reputation scores, and investigations. Even when providers impose safeguards, allowing strangers’ traffic to exit through my connection is not equivalent to watching an advertisement.

It is a fundamentally different bargain.

Samsung has finally decided that bargain should not be offered through its television apps. I hope the ban is enforced aggressively, because a written policy accomplishes very little if remotely delivered code can sidestep review.

I also hope this episode changes how people think about smart devices.

The danger is not that our appliances will become conscious and overthrow humanity. That fantasy gives the machines far too much credit. The more realistic problem is that every object in our homes becomes entangled with business models we cannot see, contracts we do not understand, and intermediaries we have never heard of.

My television does not need consciousness to betray my expectations.

It only needs an app store and insufficient oversight.

So yes, I am pleased Samsung is removing these apps. I am pleased the company is restricting new submissions. I am pleased researchers exposed the problem before the architecture was abused on an even larger scale.

But I am not applauding as though the future has been saved.

I am standing in my living room, looking suspiciously at a television that once seemed incapable of betrayal because its greatest technological ambition was remembering the volume level.

I miss that television.

It never knew my password.

It never revised its privacy policy.

It never recommended a game.

And it never invited strangers to use my internet connection while I slept.

Sources

The factual reporting and technical details in this article are based on Mnemonic’s investigation of residential proxy code in Samsung TV apps, Spur Intelligence’s analysis of 6,038 Samsung and LG smart TV apps, and TechCrunch’s report containing Samsung’s response and announced platform changes.