Maybe you’ve heard the warning: never say “yes” on the phone, or you’ll suddenly find yourself stuck with a contract. The scammers supposedly just snip out your “yes” and splice it in after a made-up question – and before you know it, you’re being asked to pay up.

Sounds alarming. But does the story hold up under scrutiny?

Normally, a blog post works its way toward the punchline – the surprise you didn’t see coming at the end. Today the punchline comes first: if you own a smart TV, you don’t own a television, you own a computer. And computers do computer things.

Everything you’ve learned about privacy and data protection deserves a second thought when it comes to a smart TV – especially since it sits in the one place where you feel least watched: the living room.

Your laptop is sitting open on the table, and you step away for a quick coffee. Your browser has the logins saved for your email, your favorite online store and a handful of other accounts. Anyone who sits down now won’t see a plainly readable list of passwords.

But can someone use that brief unwatched moment to log in to your accounts?

Your PC stops starting normally, then after a repair or a boot problem, a blue screen suddenly appears – and Windows asks for a 48-digit “recovery key.” Many people see that message for the first time in their lives.

What’s unsettling is this: BitLocker is often already active on the computer, even if the owner never knowingly turned it on.

Banner ads, blinking pop-ups, cookie notices on every single page load and invisible trackers keeping tabs on what you read: the open web is full of things nobody wants to see. A good content blocker sweeps all of that away – and not just the ads.

But “just install some blocker” is exactly the trap.