In this post we look under the hood of BrightData's SDK and how it turns ordinary consumer TVs into exit nodes of an enormous commercial, residential proxy network leveraged by the AI industry to scrape web data and train language learning models.
I’ve had great success with using a PC instead. My TV acts like a glorified monitor. I take an old PC, run Ethernet to it (Wi-Fi if it’s capable) and install Linux mint for the PC’s operating system. Windows works if you have a supported version. But since it’s always an old PC, I just use mint. Then I get a cheapo wireless keyboard, and when I want to watch TV I wake the PC up from hibernation, turn on the TV and speakers, and I can use Firefox with Ublock origin to keep ads and tracking to a minimum.
I couldn’t ever go back to using janky TV apps and being suspicious that it’s watching/listening to me.
So how do we disable/sabotage that feature?
Don’t put your TV on the Internet
One approach per the article:
Approach 1: DNS block (trivial, effective for network-routed devices):
proxyjs.brdtnet.com
proxyjs.luminatinet.com
proxyjs.bright-sdk.com
clientsdk.bright-sdk.com
clientsdk.brdtnet.com
Pardon my ignorance but how do you know what DNS server to block?
In the article they have this info under defense approaches.
It’s not blocking a DNS server, it’s using DNS to block their specific servers.
I blocked them as wildcard domains on Android with app RethinkDNS.
Nice, they were already blocked on my router
I’ve had great success with using a PC instead. My TV acts like a glorified monitor. I take an old PC, run Ethernet to it (Wi-Fi if it’s capable) and install Linux mint for the PC’s operating system. Windows works if you have a supported version. But since it’s always an old PC, I just use mint. Then I get a cheapo wireless keyboard, and when I want to watch TV I wake the PC up from hibernation, turn on the TV and speakers, and I can use Firefox with Ublock origin to keep ads and tracking to a minimum.
I couldn’t ever go back to using janky TV apps and being suspicious that it’s watching/listening to me.