Samsung (and the rest of the TV industry, Samsung is just the worst of the bunch) has fucked up trust in them extremely hard and they are not showing in any way that they have learned from the past or how they plan to re-gain consumer trust. Until that happens, it is foolish to assume they would never implement something like "connect to an open wifi".
See you’re moving the goalpost here. You went from they can to they could. That’s exactly the point of people who require proof it has happened.
When we have proof of one manufacturer connecting to an open wi-fi network to send its snooping data, we’ll have a a reckoning on our hands. I guarantee it.
Of course I'm moving goalposts. This kind of shit should be banned before someone gets the idea (or audacity) to implement it. The time for "move fast and deal with the law later" is over - it's obvious that the technical possibility is easy to implement and hard to detect for the average user, it's obvious that there is nothing good for the customer that comes out of it, and so the law should for once be proactive instead of reactive.
