Years ago I had smart TV, and while I never used anything “smart”, one day I connected it to the network to update it and forgot it, two days later I was checking my dns and 80% of the traffic and blocked queries in the past two days were from one device, after tracking it, it was the TV!

So what I have now is a pre-smart TV I found at the thrift, still very good picture that’s more than enough for the few times I use it.

There should be a way to disable the “smart” garbage in new TVs, or an option to buy normal ones at least.