⚡️🚨 BIG - An Israeli company has turned hundreds of millions of Smart TVs into a data collection infrastructure for AI. Including yours. The company is called Bright Data. It operates the world’s largest network of residential proxies. Here’s how it works: an SDK embedded in Smart TV apps turns the device into an exit node. Bright Data’s clients’ scraping traffic passes through your home connection. Target sites see your home IP address, not that of a data center. The one making money is the app developer. The one footing the bill is you—with your bandwidth and IP reputation. The SDK works in apps for Tizen and webOS, the operating systems used by Samsung and LG. The consent dialog states that Bright Data will “occasionally” use your device’s resources. “Occasionally.” Security researchers downloaded the actual SDK configuration from a public server, without authentication. The actual limit: 200 GB of monthly traffic via Wi-Fi. Per device. And there’s one detail that makes it all worse: The SDK considers your TV “available” for routing third-party traffic even when the screen is on. Even during a call. The ignore_screen_on and ignore_on_call settings are enabled. This doesn’t mean you’ve stopped using the device. It means that the CPU and memory are within the limits set by Bright Data. You don’t decide whether the device is available. The SDK does. Include Security reverse-engineered the SDK’s protocol. The channel that routes traffic through your network has no message signatures. No authentication. No device verification. In the researchers’ words: less secure than a typical malware command-and-control server. On iOS, the SDK connects directly to the physical network interface. It bypasses any user-configured VPN. Traffic flows outside the tunnel. Corporate network, parental controls, device management—none of them see it. Among the partners listed in the SDK configuration are PlayWorks (over 400 games for Smart TVs, claimed reach of ~250 million TVs), CloudTV (over 125 TV brands), Viber (up to 820 million users), and Hola Networks, the parent company of Bright Data itself. The FBI issued a formal warning about residential proxy networks this year. Academic research dating back to 2019 documents widespread abuse. Bright Data was notified by researchers on May 11. No response. How to block: → Go to nextdns.io (free) → Add these domains to the block list: proxyjs.brdtnet.com proxyjs.luminatinet.com proxyjs.bright-sdk.com clientsdk.bright-sdk.com clientsdk.brdtnet.com → Configure your router’s DNS to point to NextDNS Detailed steps are available directly on NextDNS. It takes 5 minutes. Your TV is only yours if you keep an eye on what it’s doing with your internet.