@dangoodin I get pissed off when people try to dismiss other people's entirely justified security concerns.

You are utterly wrong in every respect, shamefully wrong. Security by analogy is a really terrible approach to security.

Here is how I look at the situation as a security expert, not a journalist.

First, the TV maker never informed me that the TV and remote had the ability to capture audio. So that is the first strike against them. Microsoft edge can't record any sound on the machine I am using now because the microphone is turned off and the webcam is disconnected.

Secondly, my laptop and desktop run anti-malware scanners from reputable sources and I only use well known browsers subject to massive amounts of peer review. While it is possible there might be some sort of backdoor in Edge or Chrome, I don't think it would stay there very long.

The same is not true of my TV. LG has really no clue what is being uploaded to their content center and neither does any other provider. Nobody is watching the app store, the scope for dropping a passive listener onto the user is actually very high.

I am not exactly pleased with the behavior of the tech companies mentioned. But they do at least have people who understand the issues and know they are targets. I see absolutely no evidence Samsung gets it and have stopped buying LG because they obviously have no interest in customer support.

The IoT schemes being promoted by the tech giants are all self serving attempts to establish a razor-and-blades captive market with absolutely no respect for the user's requirements. That is why they form a new IoT consortium every couple of years with exactly the same promises as the last one and the one before that which is being quietly shuttered having failed to deliver anything.