TechRadar · September 21, 2026 · On the brief until October 5, 2026

Samsung and LG vow to remove 'botnet' apps from their smart TV app stores that turned sets into an AI scraping machines — but the shocking claim that over 40% of webOS apps had botnet code raises the question of how things ever got this bad

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THE AI ANGLE

Crawling the web for model training data

Security researchers discovered that thousands of smart TV apps contained residential proxy code that routed web traffic through consumer living rooms. The hidden software allowed external actors to scrape web data for AI models and bypass data center blocks. Device makers LG and Samsung responded by banning the proxy code and removing compromised apps from their platforms.

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THE TEACHING ANGLE

App store operators face difficult questions about liability when common development kits quietly enlist consumer hardware into unauthorized proxy networks.

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Samsung and LG vow to remove 'botnet' apps from their smart TV app stores that turned sets into an AI scraping machines — but the shocking claim that over 40% of webOS apps had botnet code raises the question of how things ever got this bad

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