krebsonsecurity[.]com/2026/07/lg-to-ban-residential-proxies-from-smart-tv-apps/
The article talks about LG & Samsung, but it could apply to any of the apps available for TVs & streaming boxes/sticks, and while Krebs talks about malware to turn your TV or device into a proxy, that's obviously not the only type of malware that could be lurking in an app -- the proxy stuff might just be the hardest to detect or notice.
There are apps, SDKs, and software services all tailored for cybercriminals, designed to make their work easier while making $. In this case Krebs points to Bright Data [ brightdata[.]com/proxy-types/residential-proxies ], which publishes a popular toolkit used by malware developers to embed the capability to turn the TV or device into a proxy in their software.
A proxy [ wikipedia[.]org/wiki/Proxy_server ] in simplest terms is a middleman, e.g., you give a proxy a URL and it visits that site and forwards the page to your browser on your PC/laptop. What it does is hide your IP address, and thus your identity & location. That's something cybercriminals/hackers like, and it can also be used for bot nets, which are a collection of connected devices under the control of a cybercriminal usually used for nefarious purposes like DDoS.