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.”
Mike Van Lier, Director of Consumer Electronics at Samsung South Africa, explained:
“In keeping with our values to leverage the power of technology to resolve societal challenges, we will continuously develop and expand strategic products in our consumer electronics division with defence-grade security, purpose-built, with innovative and intuitive business tools designed for a new world. This technology can have a positive impact at this time, and will also be of use to both the industry and customers in the future.”
Although Samsung is promoting TV Block as a positive piece of technology, it will be disconcerting for at least some consumers who own a Samsung TV knowing at any point in the future it could be remotely disabled. It may not even be Samsung who insitgates the block. Imagine Samsung gets hacked and the hacker manages to trigger the function for all TVs connected to the internet worldwide.
Of course, you can prevent this from ever happening by not allowing your Samsung TV to connect to the internet and instead purchasing a separate streaming device to access different services. This does render a major advantage of owning a Smart TV useless, though.
