While playing around to improve the WiFi network reception of my Samsung LED TV, I enabled SWL.
It didn’t do much on the WiFi reception, but I found out that after enabling SWL, other devices could hardly find my regular access point any more.
Somehow, a very strong access point appeared pushing away all access points. The new access point had an SSID like SEC_LinkShare_######.
Though this wasn’t mentioned in the PDF manual of my TV, PDF manual of my TV (a [Archive.is] UE40C6800 LED-TV 40″ with [WayBack] Firmware T-VALDEUC-3018.1.exe ), a quick search on SEC_LinkShare+SSID indicated in the direction of Samsung devices.
So, when you enable SWL on your TV:
- your TV will become a local secured access point
- the SWL access point will be called SEC_LinkShare_###### (with 6 digits at the end)
- you cannot influence the WiFi channel used by the SWL access point
- there is no information on the password to connect to the SWL access point
- the SWL access point will potentially have a higher signal than access points further away (effectively blocking them)
Conclusion: Unless you have other Samsung devices that need the SWL, don’t activate it on your TV.
–jeroen
PS: Some links from Axel’s comment:
- [WayBack] Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically | Electronic Frontier Foundation
- [WayBack] Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 