This is because as soon as a monitor is connected to a Windows computer, it automatically installs both the LG Monitor App Installer and McAfee Scam Detector without ever asking the user for permission.
Is this not a felony under U.S. law? Computer hacking has HUGE criminal liability.
Another win for Linux
Name something you do as a corporation to avoid any laws or accountability with the current administration
BRIBE THE DOJ
let’s see if that answer’s on the board…survey says…!
DING
It’s actually windows doing it
Let me guess, proprietary drivers cause this and the open source or generic drivers lack “functionality”.
If it turns on, reaches its peek resolution and refresh rate that is good enough for me, I genuinely can care less for HDR or the nitty gritty features.
Old monitors need it for absolutely nothing, like my 2020 LG. Every feature works out of the box, because it has to over display cables.
I think at most it adds an ICC profile, but it’s not matched to the panel anyway and you can just install that seperately.
It probably says somewhere in the ToS, which is still a fucking disgrace that those exists, without having to make clear and obvious bullet points you click “consent”.
Even having to make consent multiple times should be mandatory for every shit they try to do.
Solution if users shouldnt hit consent multiple times? Dont do shady shit.
I have a plan: we pass a law that any contract intended for the public (ToS, various other terms and conditions, privacy policies, etc) must be at the average reading level of the American public. We’ll either incentivize better education or better contracts. Maybe both!
Doesnt matter if it’s in kindergarten level reading, as long as it’s a few paragraphs long, people will accept it.
Apparently it’s windows doing it. Not the monitor via the HDMI or something. I guess that’s what you get for using windows.
Yep. Windows installs manufacturer “helper” apps automatically like drivers. Got a Logitech mouse? You probably have a Logitech app in there you never asked for too because you plugged it in.
Stop using windows.
I don’t use windows
I think that was more of a PSA for other people reading along.
My wife and I bought a TV on the internet. What brand? I have no idea but it’s the type they have in waiting rooms and restaurants. Zero internet. Zero apps. You push the button and it turns on. It’s the best fucking purchase we’ve made in the last five years.
Commercial displays are like that. I have a couple that haven been decom’d from work I use. They don’t have speakers but I don’t need those anyway
Where’d you find it?
Amazon, unfortunately.
I have an LG TV that has never been exposed to the internet and it’s amazing.
This is it. Skip all the setup screens and just use it
That won’t save you. It’ll still install the driver if its hooked to Windows.
I went through the nonsense of putting the LG tv and some other stuff on a separate network that has no internet access but I can still connect to them. It’s annoying that’s needed.
Same! I jailbroke mine and can watch YouTube and Twitch ad-free, and it’s got Jellyfin on the homebrew channel, so I can access my server off my TV :)
Omg you can jailbreak smart TVs now? HELL yeah
EDIT: I am especially interested in LG webOS because I was a Palm Prē enjoyer back in the day and I rooted the fuck out of that phone (still have it somewhere)
Check out rootmy.tv to jailbreak your LG smart TV. Depending on the model and firmware, there could be additional steps you need to take, but in my case, since I still had the stock firmware installed, it was just a single slide of a button on the TV’s web browser.
I had to put malicious mp3 files on a USB for my newer C2, but my older C8 was rooted in the browser
malicious mp3 files on a USB
LOL, this is hilarious, while simultaneously infuriating that the owners of hardware are required to install a Trojan Horse to uninstall the malicious software installed by the manufacturer.
That’s awesome. Mine is 42" and I’m using it as my monitor for my desktop. I had no idea you could jailbreak TVs now, what a time to be alive. I recently picked up a Raspberry Pi 5 and I’m planning on using it to replace my stupid Chromecast on my living room TV. As long as the Pi can stream from my Jellyfin server and watch YouTube then that’s all I need.
There’s a website called rootmy.tv that can help you find or execute roots right off the TV’s web browser. When I bought the TV, I hadn’t connected it to the Internet a single time, so it still had the stock firmware. I could just type in the URL and click a single button - that’s it. Depending on the firmware, model and brand, this could look different for you. Also I’m not sure if this only works for LG TVs - might have to do some research to find a suitable method for yours.
That also sounds very practical. I’d love to get into Pis sometime, but the RAM fiasco is making them quite expensive for my current budget, sadly.
My LG TV is just so old it isn’t allowed to connect anymore lol. I just keep my old gaming laptop connected and it’s a far better experience then any modern smart TV with all the image smoothing junk.
I’ve used an LG monitor for about 5 years, and never install the manufacturer’s software unless it looks genuinely useful. When I saw the Gamers Nexus video I went to check my installed apps, and sure enough there was LG’s monitor app, installed silently without my knowledge. I used Bulk Crap Uninstaller to get rid of it.
To prevent this kind of thing in future, run gpedit.msc and enable “Prevent automatic download of applications associated with device metadata” under Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → System → Device Installation.
Same. I noticed earlier this month when I got a popup to install Mcafee, out of nowhere. I was mortified.
Or you could just change to an os that doesnt piss on its users constantly
Indeed. I use Linux most of the time, and MacOS a bit of the time, but the old Windows desktop is still there for the infrequent times when I need it to work on old music projects. I have it too dual-booting into Linux, so even it spends most of its time in a more sane OS.
Unfortunately, dual gpu and ray tracing setups don’t work very well on linux.
Sounds like a hostage situation
I didn’t watch the video, but maybe they said how this done.
If it installed silently, it must be getting pulled in via Windows update right? Where Microsoft just sees this a regular old driver for a device I would imagine?
I have an LG monitor, maybe about 5 years or older. But I don’t have windows so I assume it knows nothing.
EDIT: Nevermind. I went and watched the section at the beginning, and yep that is exactly how it is done. Does windows not even vet what a vendor hands them as a driver? Perhaps they don’t care, but this seems like an easily exploitable route.
I suspect the thoroughness of the vetting is inversely proportional to the size of the kickback to Microsoft.
Got me curious. Quick search and I found three windows drivers that had keyloggers hidden in them. Go figure it was HP!
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HP Notebook Keyboard Drivers: Keylogging code was discovered in the SynTP.sys file, which was part of the Synaptics Touchpad driver shipped with certain HP notebook models.
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HP Audio Drivers: Researchers found keylogging features within the Conexant HD Audio Driver (specifically version 1.0.0.46 and earlier) used in various HP laptops and other Windows systems.
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Oh my God, I just checked and me too.
That’s what I thought was happening here. The headline is a bit incorrect… the monitor didn’t install the bloatware, Windows did.
Now the drivers/software that Windows installed is likely from the MS store/update path and was made and signed by LG, but still. Plug this monitor into linux and it’s not going to do it because linux doesn’t have that mechanism.
All of this is true but I really hate the headline. Headlines for this SHOULD SAY “Microsoft’s Windows update feature is distributing adware.”
This has been going on forever, though. I had an Asus motherboard that literally installed adware, and an even older Sony laptop that topped it.
Both LG and Microsoft share responsibility. LG for doing it and Microsoft for allowing it.
Not only that but my old LG smart TV (47LM8600, I think manufactured in 2012) has literal suicide timers in its built in apps. Mine has never been connected to any network and yet it mysteriously informed me after approximately three years of ownership that all of its player apps such as Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, etc. would stop working because they were “no longer supported,” all of them within the time frame of the same couple of weeks. It knew this somehow, apparently via magic, or quantum fluctuations, or psychic brain waves. Without internet connectivity.
Obviously I don’t use any of those features so I didn’t give a rat’s ass and I still don’t. But I still find that deeply suspicious.
There was some controversy a while ago about Samsung TVs finding and connecting to open WiFi networks autonomously if they weren’t connected to a network explicitly
The only technical explanation that’s not malice would be that some certificate store on the device had expiring certificates and would need an update to continue to function (or rather connect to remote servers).
Are there ever certs that expire in 3 years?
Yes. Certs can expire after whatever time the issuer wants to set for them. That could be six months or 20 years. Some infrastructure has limits on max and min lengths (more max than min usually) but not all and there are best practices as well.
More importantly the certs could have been five years old by the time this person got the TV for a total age of 8 years.
Planned obsolescence is one of those things that just infuriates me so much about capitalism.
Need to fill the landfills.
Luckily for me at least, like so many of us dweebs here, I drive my TV with a little media center PC anyway. So I couldn’t care less which of their services they disable. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. The real annoying part is that these don’t work (presumably), but you still can’t remove the icons from the thing’s home screen.
Same. My TV is a second monitor and really only gets use during football season. Who wants to watch TV in real time anymore anyway?
I have an LG smart tv that I’ve had for a few years now. It is easily the worst TV I’ve ever bought. The interface sucks, the remote sucks, it doesn’t have the Dropout app, it is bright as the sun when the screen is on in the dark even with adaptive brightness on, slow to register button presses and load apps, etc. Even if it weren’t a privacy nightmare, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
Samsung one-ups them though. The UI and remote are, somehow, even worse.
I have 2, one a high end Oled and I don’t use their UI, I use an Apple TV. Always have. Tv UI’s are all terrible
Which is interesting. I had an LG TV from 2017 that I replaced with a newer Samsung TV. The remote sucks, the interface sucks, apps work poorly, and they’re displaying ads, the fuckers. The entire family misses the LG TV.
it doesn’t have the Dropout app
Firstly, 👊 for being a Dropout appreciator. But it’s definitely in there somewhere. I’ve got Dropout loaded and running on my LG from years back.
Which model? I bought an OLED48B4PUA a while back and I’ve been happy with it. Could be brighter, but I knew that going in.
But I also don’t use it for anything but being a display. It’s not connected to the Internet; I just use a Chromecast from my phone for most things (or connect directly to HDMI).
Bought a LG TV and a Monitor three years ago. Last time I will do that. Really happy about my decision not to let the TV have access to the internet.
Good luck finding a brand NOT doing it by the time you’re ready for a new one.
A lot of bad ones out there, but some are worse than others. For example, I’m not going to consider a Samsung TV because of how many times they’ve done something sketchy
LG is also falling down the list with this incident
Yeah fist time I saw an ad on my smart monitor I reset it and never connected it to my wifi again
What’s the point of a smart monitor? It’s connected to a PC. The PC is smart.
I’d love to know who wants all that extra crap
Yep, mine has never reached the internet, it is connected but is blocked at the firewall so I can still hook home assistant up to it.
And you think the other manufacturers are different?
Only solution is NO NETWORK. Use as a simple TV. I have 2 fairly new LGs and none are network connected. They work perfectly that way. I learnt the lesson with my 15y old Samsung SmartTV, one of the first to the market, and it wanted to use a Samsung account for almost everything, even to use the Youtube client. Nope.
These are computer monitors, not TVs. Plugging them into a Windows box triggers Windows to silently install their “driver,” which silently installs a handful of other startup apps. It’s an escalation of the smartTV-wifi path.
Anybody truly worried about being monitored isn’t going to be running windows.
Better alternatives existing doesn’t give Windows a free pass to be as shitty as they want.
Yes… No true Scotsman would use Windows.
I grabbed a used Samsung dumb tv off fb market place but I haven’t decided how im going to configure a streaming device to it. All the streaming sticks do the same thing. Building my own sounds like a pain.
I have a littler server but I want a remote and a basically have to make my own box to be able to cut out these 3rd party spies.
LG clearly stands for “Literal Garbage”. The DisplayPort and HDMI ports on the gaming monitor I bought a few years ago failed approximately 6 months in.
My old LG monitor (32GK850) would occasionally ‘crash’ and require powering off at the mains.
Only monitor I’ve ever had do that.
The HDR was worse than useless too, obviously you can’t do much with edge-lit VA, but the tonemapping was just plain awful.
Talk about a company that has enshitified, I had an LG TV from 2008 that still worked when I gave it away a couple years ago, the LG TV I bought in 2019 has already died.
What dongle or what have you do y’all use that’s privacy focused? I need to disconnect my LG TV and we have an old Chromecast but that’s Google…
I have a ShieldTV plugged into mine and it has been great. You can install a new Launcher to have full control of what you see and it works great. I pretty much just use it for Jellyfin and YouTube now, but in the past have had all of the streaming services at one time or another.
Our shield TV recently stopped allowing Projectivy launcher (the 3rd party one we were using) to be bound to the home button on the remote. I can launch Projectivy and switch to it, but as soon as I hit the home button it’s right back to the default launcher.
I assumed this was something nvidia (or google) did to be dicks, but it sounds like that hasn’t happened to you, so now I’m less sure.
What 3rd party launcher are you using? Maybe I should try a different one.
I had an old laptop that I hooked in and configured it to boot into a fullscreen browser to our Emby server. Could just as easily have it boot into a browser with shortcuts to your streaming services.
We use one of these mini keyboard/touchpads to control it:
Lately, though, I just picked up a set of wireless HDMI adapters and just plug one of those into the closest laptop and play from there.
KDE Connect is also a control option
Kde connect really is amazing, its on all my devices
Have one those keyboards too. Thing is fantastic!
Weve had a similar setup for nearly 10 years and its fricken great. We built a low spec computer using old parts from our desktops, hooked it up to our tv via hdmi, and plugged in a wireless keyboard with built in trackpad to act as the remote. We get all the same AD blocking and content access as a desktop because, you know, its a desktop but in the livingroom. My personal favorite is using a second account on discord to pull up streams on the tv from the couch while joining on my phone via my primary account for voice.
raspi4 + libreelec
But I’d suggest OrangePi instead if you were buying new stuff.
I’ll give that a look, thank you!
The best cheap solution is a Google TV with Projectivy launcher to bypass the adware.
The best fully non-adware solution as others said seems to be a mini-pc running Linux or other cleaner environment you set up.
Bought an Onn 4k TV box from Walmart when it was $20, and I followed these steps to deGoogle it: https://old.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/12rya0t/change_launcher_debloat_the_new_onn_4k_streaming/
Yeah mini-pc is the way. Throw Linux on it and it’ll last for years, trouble free
I have a Linux mini PC. There are definite pros, like controlling it via SSH from my Home Assistant, running Netflix in Firefox with adblocker… But drawbacks are no HDR, no 4k for streaming, heck, even 720p max for Hulu (and Disney, but I don’t have one).
However, high sails have higher resolution too, it’s just an additional step.
Linux definitely has HDR. I’ve been using Bazzite with Steam Big Picture mode as my TV interface for years and can use HDR just fine.
I definitely recommend piracy, but there are also ways to get streaming services to send full quality streams. I won’t recommend them though, because you shouldn’t have to do it in the first place for a service you’re paying for. Just pirate and use a media server or something like Kodi for a nice interface for local files.
He is saying those streaming services wont allow HDR even if Linux itself is capable. Which is why he could set sail to recover that functionality.
I love projectivy and how clean it is but I have had so much trouble getting the tv to launch straight into it on 2 separate Google TVs so I just don’t use it anymore really.
I use an nvidia shield, and used the developer options to disable Google’s built in launcher (and most other google related services). That’s what it takes to keep your chosen launcher. I also used an app to remap the netflix button on that stupid toblerone they call a remote to act as a mute button, so accidentally pressing it doesn’t cause me a minute of trying to get back to my content.
Yeah, I suspect Google pushes changes to the backend OS that keep breaking it on purpose, but at least we’ve got it to stick on our two TVs with a lot of effort and setting changes. Least worst option considering how pricy mini-PCs are, unfortunately.
I connected a raspberry pi to my TV and control it with a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo to pirate all of my shows on a greysite
I think my LGTV predates a lot of this, thankfully. I’ve had it since 2020, but there are still several settings (like ‘ad personalization’) that I have turned off, and I never connect it to the Internet on purpose.
My dumb LG monitor from 2020 got the adware update.
If you run it on Windows, it has nothing to do with the monitor’s hardware. Windows Update will just install the driver to your system when it recognizes the display.
Jesus… this is actually 1984 territory now. We all have “TV’s” (monitors) that actually monitor us. Yuck
