[Tor3]

From previous discussions there are apparently TVs which will connect to any open network nearby, if it can find one.

I got myself a normal, non-smart Philips 49" TV some ten years ago, it's good, but I don't expect to be able to find something similar anymore.

[worldofmatthew]

Your smart TV would make you risk going to prison for theft? Just because its open does not mean permission to use.

[Tor3]

Huh? Open networks are open. You don't go to prison for that. Anyway, as the next comment said, there aren't many open networks anymore, though you'll still find some (see other comment)

[inigyou]

Walking into a random house's open door is still illegal.

Anyway, intent matters. This probably wouldn't be found criminal unless there was malicious intent.

[qlte]

Please provide any evidence of a specific TV model that has done this.

[kyriakos]

Who runs open WiFi networks in 2026?

[Tor3]

Way less than before, but, as an example, the supermarket very close to my home (in my home country - my other comment elsewhere is about our home in Japan) has an open network. It's presumably so that when customers are there then the supermarket's app, on customers phones, will have access to coupons and the like. My own phone utilizes that (I don't use a data plan with that phone, as I mostly use it for calls and not having a data plan saves me a ton of money - it's basically free).

[kyriakos]

I've seen a lot of open networks in stores, cafes and malls in my country too but on most occasions they at least take you to a captive portal to accept their TOS or ask you to enter an email address to spam you later, they are not just connect and browse with zero interaction.

[Tor3]

There are still connect-and-use ones, like the one I mentioned, and the rest of them (fortunately there aren't that many which requires an email address anymore, though some exist) are just uselessly annoying. Airports, for example, always try to go through a 'connect' phase, and on Android that's sent through some Android-tool which often don't even work for some of those networks. And for no reason - TOS is useless, and sometimes there's not even a TOS - it's just a "connect' button. All of that makes it hard, sometimes impossible to connect, for absolutely zero reason. :-(

[m132]

Hopefully nobody, but still—it takes just one

[permo-w]

Japan is full of them

[Tor3]

I haven't seen that many actually. In our neighborhood in Japan the area is crowded with home networks, they're all encrypted.

And when I've tried navigating in large cities (Tokyo included) and found that my stupid tablet's GPS relied on getting the ephemeris data from the internet, and never through the GPS itself, I couldn't start navigating until I connected to something.. and I spent hours trying to find an open network, unsuccessfully. Happened twice, the second time in Nagoya. No open networks. Well, Starbucks have that, but then you need to find one.

[kyriakos]

interesting. any idea why?

[permo-w]

they say that Japan is simultaneously living 20 years in the past and 20 years in the future. lots of legacy devices are still being used for all manner of quirky convenience contraptions. they also live in an extremely high trust society where networks don't necessarily need to be secured

If you want a very specific example, the original nintendo DS can only connect to WEP connections, which meant that when I was there I was able to play parts of DS games that wouldn't have been accessible in the west

[ButlerianJihad]

Zealous Autoconfig https://m.xkcd.com/416/