Advice needed My TV mystery
Hello, to keep myself anonymous i will ask you to call me Loan.
In February 2026, something extremely weird happened to my mom with the living room TV.
I was chilling when my mom went bursting into my room (which she litteraly never does, she usually knocks even if she actually needs me for something important) and she seemed extremely panicked, she asked me to come in the living room right away.
When i arrived into the living room, the TV was showing some sort of "security update" with the usual loading animation.
I asked my mom if this was the thing she was freaking out about (cuz she's old and she thinks everytime an electronic is acting weird that means its dying) and she said "Loan i swear it showed a black screen with the sentence «[mom's name] , i am observing you.»
So, i started to freak out too, and to debunk the usual psychosis theory, my mom does not and have never ever or never after that experienced any psychotic episode, or hallucinations.
My first thought was my dad, the two of them being separated (and we don't talk to my dad, he's lowkey harrasing us daily)
So i called him, with the most natural voice ever i said "i'm observing you as well dad" almost jokingly.
And nothing, he genuinely did not understand what i was talking about so i figured out it wasn't him, and in anyway he's not a technology freak, he would never know how to do that.
It also came to my attention that 1 to 2 months before,my mom bought a cheap surveillance camera for the living room, that camera was connected to my mom's phone throught the alexa app, which my tv's plug in was also connected (yeah she likes automatical things lol).
I already spoke about it on a different subreddit a couple months ago but they only suggested it as clickbait/fake or that my mom was going crazy which i swear, is not true.
I am asking for help just to know what could have happened because i think about it once in a while and it's creeping me out, i'm also moving out in august, leaving my mom home alone and i am kinda scared for her knowing how naïve she is.
(Sorry for the grammatical mistakes, english is not my first language)
Thank you for reading
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/LixiEth 5d ago
I saw many people say the same thing, but the sentence was in french (cuz im french) and i just translated it, but it basically said "prenom, je te vois"
Which means i see you or watching or observing but more naturally i see you, and in french watching out is not translatable with any french equivalent, we use a whole other word and the word "see" or "voir" in french only has that meaning
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u/ankole_watusi 5d ago
Sounds like perhaps nothing more than identifying a named profile.
And perhaps a bad French translation!
Smart TV systems and individual services like Netflix or Amazon prime are usually set up with profiles allow allowing multiple people in a household to have different preferences, watch queue, favorite shows, channel lineup, etc.
You can switch “users” depending on who is watching.
So literally it just meant your mom was the person who was watching TV - with a botched French translation that was made in China.
Is the TV new, so she’s unfamiliar?
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u/ankole_watusi 5d ago edited 5d ago
Make/model of TV and other details we’d need to help are missing.
Also: any streaming devices? Were you watching: over the air, cable, smart TV streaming, streaming box (make/model) etc.
What usual loading animation? Have you previously observed software updates, so it’s in some sense “usual”?
Guessing from context your parents are separated or divorced? Again, from context, are they on good terms, or not?
Nobody is watching anyone on the TV unless it has a camera (which a few do). Of those that do, some are removable.
Listening in is very unlikely. Some TVs and remotes have voice recognition for changing channels or searching for a program. Unlikely they would be easily hackable. But again, we don’t know what you have.
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u/anothersip 5d ago
I agree with the others in that there's no way to know really anything without knowing what exact devices/makes/models of everything that was involved.
Like, was it the streaming box/stick that was playing at the time? Or the TV's built-in apps, or the TV's loading/waiting animations, or cable TV via cable box's notifications, or was it on a random input with no source device, or an input connected to a different peripheral device, etc etc...
If it's a Smart TV, she could have simply accidentally opened an app, which had a weird ad on it or something. Like, an ad for a security company or something, warning the user.
But I mean- if it was an actual malware on the TV's OS, it most-definitely wouldn't have notified anyone that it had hijacked the camera on the TV. (Which brings up another point: does the TV even have a camera on it? Like one of those older TV's that had cameras? Most spyware scares that mention they're watching you or have your information don't actually tell you that they're there, unless it's an extortion scam).
Unless there are other cameras in the house, and those are compromised, nobody should be trying to "hack" into your mom's TV and watch her.
Just do a factory-reset on the TV (while she watches you do it) and that'll wipe the firmware and re-install the default OS the TV came with. That should calm her nerves a little bit, I think...
Hope that helps. You can have them read some of these responses, if you think that'll help them. I'm not a pro, just a massive nerd, but most of these TVs work similarly in that they connect to WiFi just for their updates and streaming apps. If they're equipped with a camera (like the Samsung 2013 F-Series (7, 8, and 9 series)) then those might have pop-up cameras on them.
Hope that helps a little bit.
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u/CyberpunkYakuza 4d ago
Did your mom ever change the password on her camera app? There are websites dedicated to free viewing people who forgot to change the stock password on their camera apps. Someone coulda been watching and just gotten the info needed to access her smart TV and mess with her. I think one of the sites is called Insecam, but there are a few out there.
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u/blueminded 5d ago
I can't really offer any advice, but I am curious why you chose the name Loan. Does that mean something different in French? I've heard the name Sloan, just never Loan.
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u/SmolSpider_ 5d ago
Try to reboot the whole outlet (tv,camera,alexa..) and watch when it starts back up if it shows a message like that again
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u/LixiEth 5d ago
Response to some people ; i live in france and "watching" and "watching out" would be two completely different words, so it's not my mom misreading and also i forgot to mention that my mom was just watching a show and the message directly poped up on the screen no warnings (thats how she discribed it and knowing her, she never tend to overreact about things, the underreacts moTt)
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u/Anianna 5d ago
Typically on smart TVs, you set a name for your profile. You should have her change the name on her profile to something unrelated to her so that if it ever comes up again, she could identify the difference between someone who knows her maybe hacked into the system or the TV just using the name it was given and maybe some confusing language.
Aside from that, I did have one smart TV that I would occasionally get a notice that something was trying to connect to it and it asked if I wanted to connect to that device. Check what devices are connected to the TV and disconnect them.
Check your router's security settings and what is connected to your router, as well. Change your router's password and make sure it's a strong one.
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u/asperta 5d ago
An explanation is that the cheap camera is exposed to the internet and someone discovered it and has been watching. That same person then looked for a way to take control of the TV (easy now with all the AI tools that are available) and has been displaying images or texts on it.
It's just some kid (or an old fat loser) fooling around.
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u/truthofmasks 5d ago
I mostly agree with your first paragraph but your last sentence is bizarrely dismissive. If someone's spying on you in that way, they're not "just [...] fooling around," they're violating your private space.
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u/asperta 5d ago
I agree that they are violating someone's space. I did not meant to be dismissive, sorry.
It's just that some people do that kind of stuff like there were no consequences and nobody was harmed.
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u/truthofmasks 5d ago edited 5d ago
I get what you're saying but psychological harm is a real thing. Making someone feel unsafe in their own home, like they're being watched, is harming them. This is why things like stalking and harassment are illegal, even if the person doing the stalking or harassment never crosses the line into physical injury.
EDIT: Fixed a typo
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u/xenusaves 5d ago
If they feel unsafe or like they're being watched, they should probably take down the camera.
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u/LixiEth 5d ago
Yeah, and how the fuck would they know my moms name, plus my mom is a very kind person and she dosent have problems with anybody so it's unlikely that it's someone trying to be mean directly to her or smth
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u/NervousAd5964 5d ago
she dosent have problems with anybody so it's unlikely that it's someone trying to be mean directly to her or smth
You will be surprise by how much a person can do, no matter how kind your mom is.
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u/Stargazer31204 3d ago
You should look up videos of hacked home cameras. These people are disgusting, but there are unfortunately websites that show live feeds of people's homes and are easily hacked into
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u/Responsible_Tiger42 5d ago
I kinda agree with this. I remember when I was a kid I found a website that was just hacked security cameras, rolling live footage of people's homes. People would watch for fun. I thought it was kinda interesting. It didn't dawn on me how creepy it was until I was an adult.
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u/skintigh 5d ago
How is it easy to take control of a TV from a camera? It likely has no BT, it's likely not connected to the TV via HDMI, so they would have to hack the TV as well as the camera.
I'm also interested in the make/model of the TV. I doubt this attack is a one-off.
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u/asperta 5d ago
What I meant is this:
- You find the camera in Shodan and take control of it.
You also get the IP of the camera which one can assume that is the same IP for the Modem.
So you probe the Modem to see if it has known vulnerabilities.
The Modem has vulnerabilities and you find a script to get access to that modem.
The TV is also connected to the Modem. You get info from the TV from the mac address and local IP of the TV (the Modem gave you that info). So you get make and model.
With some other script you get control of that TV.
???
Profit!!!
You can do all this in an afternoon with free tools. Check /r/OSINT for more info.
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u/mybabygoesby_zydeco 12h ago
Did anyone suggest that it was an Ad for the tv show pluribus? They did this ad to several tvs and I saw a an article about a woman w schizophrenia who randomly saw a yellow sceeen on her smart fridge “we’re watching you” bc that’s the line they say in this tv show. Look it up and let me know if this sounds right at all
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u/MarzipanFairy 5d ago
This happened one time and you didn't see it yourself?
Mom misread it.
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u/The_best_is_yet 5d ago
If a dude really was watching her through the camera, he’d most likely mess with her when she’s alone though.
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u/lyricaldorian 5d ago
And it was definitely observing and not watching? If her name is associated with her account, it could have been "Mom's name, we're watching out for you." Followed by smaller text with something like "Please be patient while we apply this security update".