Abstract
Millions of smart TVs in China may have collected data without the knowledge of viewers about Wi-Fi networks found within range and attached devices.
According to the South China Morning Post, an owner of a Skyworth smart TV posted last month on a Chinese technical forum that their suspicions were aroused when they felt their TV’s operation had slowed down, and wondered what background processes might be running.
The unnamed user examined the code running on his Android-powered Skyworth TV, and discovered it was scanning for devices connected to their family’s Wi-Fi every 10 minutes, scooping up information:
What do they collect?
“TV App installed in users TV sends back the hostname, mac, ip and even the network delay time. It also detects the surrounding wifi SSID names, The mac address is also packaged and sent to this domain name of gz-data.com.” GZ-Data.com is the domain name of Gozen Data, a data analytics company that specializes in delivering targeted advertising to smart TVs.
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Cyber Security: Awareness is the key 