My television crapped out. Being cheap, I went to Goodwill and found a replacement. It’s much smaller than what I had, but that actually suits me.
But I started playing around; poking through settings. I discovered that this thing has wifi. Huh. So I connected to the Internet.
It also, like most newer TVs, includes specific apps for various streaming services. I clicked on Amazon.
And it brought up the usual selection of television shows and movies. Um… what?
I clicked the Prime button and got the subscriptions movies. I clicked a random movie and it played.
Prime is a paid subscription service. Why is it letting me watch subscription movies? I poked around a little more and found the answer.
The previous owner of this TV is a Prime subscriber and left his login on the machine. Turns out he’s a Net Flix subscriber, too. I haven’t gone through other services yet, but I suspect he subscribed to more.
And left those logins when he donated the TV.
Never ever do that.
Prime for example: Subscribers get a lot of material, but they can also pay out more money to rent or buy even more. If I were less principled, I good charge up a lot of stuff on “daniel’s” account. The good news is that the app won’t show me his actual login credentials; so I can’t use it to order any other items off Amazon with my computer.
Would “daniel” donate his old computer to Goodwill, and fail to delete (and wipe!) his personal data… like bank records and logins?
TV’s now are computers. You need to clear them when you toss them out.
Trashed copiers are also fun. Most have a storage unit that holds every page it ever copied, and almost nobody takes the time to clear it.
Stay safe
And some printers have document buffers.