Samsung has restricted the publication of new Smart TV apps capable of using a user’s internet connection as a residential proxy. This is a system in which someone else’s internet traffic passes through the user’s device, and websites see it as coming from a home IP address rather than a data center. The company has also begun removing already published apps with this function.
The move was prompted by research from the Norwegian company Mnemonic, which found proxy components in several Samsung TV apps, including the game Pac-Man. At the same time, the television did not connect to the proxy network automatically: the user had to agree to the offer in the app. However, the user may not have understood that they were effectively allowing their TV’s internet connection to be used to relay someone else’s traffic. Residential proxies are used for both legitimate tasks, including collecting open data, and for hiding the source of suspicious traffic.
Similar cases have been found in LG televisions, mobile apps and Android set-top boxes. Manufacturers are gradually closing off a channel that allows home devices to be used as intermediaries for other people’s internet traffic — even if only with formal user consent that is far from always informed.
