People can be paranoid about the security of their laptops and smartphones, and they're not necessarily off-base about that. Those are frequently the most important devices in a person's life, so hackers are eager to hijack them, whether for fraud or planting spyware. In countries with authoritarian regimes, a lapse in phone security could easily put you or someone else in prison.
There's usually less concern about smart appliances like TVs, but not zero. It's one of the reasons some people actively hunt down “dumb” TVs, or choose to leave smart ones disconnected from the internet as often as possible. How seriously should you take the threat of TV malware? The news is largely good, though some platforms are more secure than others. For the sake of brevity, I'm going to focus on the three main smart TV platforms: Google TV, Roku OS, and Amazon's Fire OS.
How secure is your smart TV?
Google TV
As you might guess, Google TV is based on Android, the company's open-source operating system, more commonly found on phones and tablets. For security purposes, this is generally a good thing — all Android apps are sandboxed, meaning they can't interact with each other or the main operating system beyond approved frameworks. In fact, as on your phone, a service called Google Play Protect is constantly running safety checks, even on apps from beyond the Google Play Store. In…