GoKawiilEveryone worries about the apps on their phone. Almost no one looks at the ones on their TV. We scanned 6,038 of them across LG and Samsung; 2,058 were selling your IP address.
On screen, it's a relaxing fish tank. Or a clock. Or solitaire. Or puppies. Under the hood, it is a residential proxy: software that can send other people's internet traffic out through your living room. And we found it everywhere.
Why TVs are different
Smart TVs are almost ideal proxy hosts. They sit on the same home network as everything else, but they do not feel like computers, so people rarely audit them like computers. There is no battery drain to notice, no cellular bill to spike, no app switcher full of suspicious background activity. A TV can stay plugged in, signed in, and online for years while the user thinks of it as furniture.
That changes the consent equation too. Most people do not have a working mental model for what it means to sell access to their residential IP address, no matter what device they are using. On a TV, the gap is even wider: a one-time prompt navigated with a remote can disappear into the setup flow, while the app keeps monetizing the connection long after anyone remembers what they accepted.
How proxy SDKs end up in apps
The answer is money. Ads need attention, but when you insert ads it degrades the user experience. These apps are designed for the opposite: a clock, a fish tank, a quiet screen that doesn’t bother you with constant ads. Add a proxy SDK and the app can keep looking calm while the TV's internet connection makes money in the background.
What each SDK considers consent
Below are what these companies consider consent for their proxy SDKs. They ask once, and then never again.
The background clause is the part that matters: all three prompts say the proxy can keep running after the app is closed. The app goes away. The proxy does not.
... continue reading