Aaron Pettman

To avoid throttling / blockage, web scraping (data extraction) for AI is being re-routed through residential smart TVs by Israeli company Bright Data.

https://blog.includesecurity.com/2026/06/the-smart-tv-in-your-livingroom-is-a-node-in-the-aiscraping-economy/

The Smart TV in Your LivingRoom Is a Node in the AIScraping Economy - Include Security Research Blog

In this post we look under the hood of BrightData's SDK and how it turns ordinary consumer TVs into exit nodes of an enormous commercial, residential proxy network leveraged by the AI industry to scrape web data and train language learning models.

Include Security Research Blog
Jun 6 at 3:39pmWeb
Show threadtootbrute3d ago
@aaronpettman always fucking Israeli companies in the middle of terrible spyware/malware or "ad tech". Fuck.
Show threadtootbrute3d ago

@aaronpettman how to stop this bullshit with #pihole

Approach 1: DNS block (trivial, effective for network-routed devices):

proxyjs.brdtnet.com
proxyjs.luminatinet.com
proxyjs.bright-sdk.com
clientsdk.bright-sdk.com
clientsdk.brdtnet.com

Blocking proxyjs.* kills the peer tunnel without affecting any customer who legitimately uses Bright Data’s customer-facing proxy service on a different domain.

Show thread Kale 3d ago
@aaronpettman 2026, people still haven't learned not to hook their tv up to the internet
Show threadZoidberg For President2d ago
@aaronpettman Well, let's burn "smart" tv too then!
Show threadAdrian Tombu2d ago
@aaronpettman On top of that they're petty thieves : two years ago I put money on my account balance to test the product and only spent a few euros. But there's no way in the interface to get this money back and the support has never answered me once 🤦🏼‍♀️
Show threadEldeberen2d ago
@aaronpettman This aged well.

"Your toaster may be currently attacking the Internet"
October 25th, 2016