An Israeli company has turned hundreds of millions of Smart TVs into infrastructure for AI data collection. Including yours. The company is called Bright Data. It operates the world’s largest residential proxy network. The scheme: an SDK embedded in Smart TV apps turns the device into an exit node. The scraping traffic from Bright Data’s customers flows through your home internet connection. Target websites see your home IP address—not a datacenter’s. The app developer earns money. You pay the bill—in bandwidth and IP reputation. The SDK runs on apps built for Tizen and webOS, Samsung’s and LG’s operating systems. The consent dialog claims Bright Data will “occasionally” use your device’s resources. “Occasionally.” Security researchers downloaded the SDK’s actual configuration from a publicly accessible server—no authentication required. The real limit: 200GB of monthly traffic over Wi-Fi—per device. And here’s a detail that makes it worse: The SDK considers your TV “available” to route third-party traffic even when the screen is on—even during a video call. The parameters ignore_screen_on and ignore_on_call are enabled. This doesn’t mean you’ve stopped using it. It means the CPU and memory usage are within thresholds set by Bright Data. You don’t decide if your device is available—the SDK does. Include Security reverse-engineered the SDK’s protocol. The channel routing traffic through your network has no message signatures, no authentication, no device verification. In the researchers’ words: less secure than a typical malware command-and-control server. On iOS, the SDK connects directly to the physical network interface, bypassing any user-configured VPN. Traffic flows outside the tunnel. Corporate networks, parental controls, device management—none of it sees the traffic. Among the partners listed in the SDK configuration are PlayWorks (400+ Smart TV games, claimed reach of ~250 million TVs), CloudTV (125+ TV brands), Viber (up to 820 million users), and Hola Networks—the parent company of Bright Data. The FBI issued a formal alert about residential proxy networks this year. Academic research since 2019 has documented widespread abuse. Bright Data was notified by researchers on May 11. They did not respond. How to block it: → Go to nextdns.io (free) → Add these domains to your blocklist: proxyjs.brdtnet.com proxyjs.luminatinet.com proxyjs.bright-sdk.com clientsdk.bright-sdk.com clientsdk.brdtnet.com → Set your router’s DNS to point to NextDNS Step-by-step instructions are available directly on NextDNS. Takes five minutes. Your TV is only yours if you monitor what it does with your internet.