LG to Ban Residential Proxies from Smart TV Apps
Brief
The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG’s webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user’s TV.
Proxy SDK prevalence among smart TV apps for LG (webOS) and Samsung (Tizen OS) televisions. Image: Spur. us.
On July 2, we featured research by the security firm Spur that examined the prevalence of residential proxy software development kits (SDKs) in smart TV apps.