They make it essentially impossible to check using wireshark because conversations and other ad tech data leave the TV encrypted so it’s harder to sue the company. So it’s not like you could attach another pi and run wireshark on it before it goes to OpenWrt.

I am guessing the hard drive is not removable, because if they did that people would poke around into their ad tech, which could be doing illegal/questionable things, and they probably don’t want that.

I don’t know if there’s a technical way to figure this out. You would likely have to have electrical engineering or electrical circuitry experience and sauter the drive off the board, and if Samsung is smart, they will make it so the drive no longer works if it’s not interfacing with some proprietary motherboard chip. Samsung is pretty smart, there’s a lot of money in ad tech and smart TVs, so I don’t think there’s an easy way to do this.

Really, the only way to find out would be to sue them, saying the TV is defective, and also possibly add a claim for a tort like intentional invasion of privacy (which they would try to get dropped) and then subpoena their engineers for depositions and also try to get a court order that forces Samsung to provide a method to enable reading the internal hard drive (and I’m not sure if a judge would do that). But they would probably ignore such a court order unless there was a contempt order or try to settle to avoid decrypting or showing what the files are. It’s also hard to make a claim of intentional invasion of privacy (if that tort or something similar is available in your jurisdiction) when there’s mere suspicion that such a thing is going on. If there are other Samsung models that have been shown to invade privacy, you could probably say that shows Samsung is engaging in invasion of privacy and is why the message is showing up and let Samsung try to justify why that doesn’t make sense in a dismissal motion.

There’s probably a binding arbitration clause you agreed to, but you’d have to sue them and then when they argue the claim should be dismissed for binding arbitration, you would say you paid prior to a binding arbitration agreement and you never personally agreed to such an agreement (ie, you didn’t see it and were just clicking forward, someone you hired on craigslist to set up the device clicked through it, etc.) if that’s true or, if it’s not true, admit that you paid for the tv and subsequently signed the agreement because otherwise the TV wasn’t usable and argue it’s unenforceable. Depending on the case law and where you are, that argument may or may not work. I don’t know the law in this area (post-sale binding arbitration contracts) and if there are any ways around it ever.

I don’t know if a lawyer would take this on a contingency. On the one hand, it’s sort of iffy: they are providing a number for repair and so filing a defective product lawsuit is sort of questionable. On the other hand, why should a consumer have to spend time rebooting a smart TV because it’s ad tech is collecting so much data? Isn’t that inherently defective? You could file it yourself pro se if you had the time. Filing fees are really expensive, like 500 dollars or something. If you’re indigent it’s free. If this were my TV, I’d probably just file a pro se federal lawsuit, but it’s easier for me to do something like that than most people.

A lawsuit and just demanding depositions of people would be easier if you can get past an motion to dismiss based on binding arbitration claims.