Smart TVs are almost ideal proxy hosts. They sit on the same home network as everything else, but they do not feel like computers, so people rarely audit them like computers. There is no battery drain to notice, no cellular bill to spike, no app switcher full of suspicious background activity. A TV can stay plugged in, signed in, and online for years while the user thinks of it as furniture.

That changes the consent equation too. Most people do not have a working mental model for what it means to sell access to their residential IP address, no matter what device they are using. On a TV, the gap is even wider: a one-time prompt navigated with a remote can disappear into the setup flow, while the app keeps monetizing the connection long after anyone remembers what they accepted.