1 Smart TVs

Identity theft is not a joke. Millions of US families suffered from it in 2014 alone, according to the Department of Justice’s BJS. And given the growing prevalence of online streaming subscriptions, your smart TV can serve as a gateway to more than limitless binge-watching. It may in fact turn out to be the cause of financial ruin because hackers can skim credit card and other information from your television, including important information about what you like to watch, say, on Tuesday nights.

“Researchers have found that many manufacturers set the same default passwords for the same type of devices, and often users don’t change them. This means that if you have ten network-connected devices and at least one of them you didn’t take care of—the whole network is compromised”, said Andrew Newman, CEO and founder of Reason Software Company.

If you find your television switching channels, ordering movies, and changing the volume of its own accord, it may not be the kids next door. It may be the Central Intelligence Agency, the human intelligence arm of the US intelligence community, which developed a program called “Weeping Angel” to hack specifically into Samsung Smart TVs, according to a March 2017 WikiLeaks leak. Samsung said it was “urgently looking into” protecting its TVs from the CIA, but it’s unknown whether they’ve succeeded in making their mass-produced television sets CIA-proof and protecting tens of thousands of consumers from potential snooping thereby.