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owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/samsung-can-remotely-disable-any-of-its-tvs-worldwide [pcmag.com]

On July 11, a distribution center located in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa was looted and an unknown number of Samsung televisions were stolen. However, all of those TVs are now useless as Samsung has revealed they are fitted with remote blocking technology.

What you may be surprised to hear is that Samsung can do this to any of its TVs, regardless of where they are in the world. The company admitted as much in its latest Samsung Newsroom post detailing how the TVs in South Africa were stolen and then disabled.

The technology is called TV Block and it's "pre-loaded on all Samsung TV products." Whenever a TV is confirmed as being stolen, Samsung logs the serial number of the TV and then waits for it to be connected to the internet. At that point a Samsung server is connected to by default, the serial number is checked, and if it's on the list, "the blocking system is implemented, disabling all the television functions."

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