What the TV does by design:
— scans your entire home network continuously. in their test: one TV identified 38 unrelated devices including phones, smartwatches, printers, and thermostats belonging to people not involved in the test.
— collects the names and signal strengths of every nearby WiFi network, plus location data. all sent to LG Ad Solutions.
— runs ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) on everything displayed on screen. including HDMI inputs. your laptop, gaming console, or work monitor connected to the TV is being fingerprinted.
— one TV exchanged roughly 4GB of ACR-related data per month.
What the TV does that LG says it doesn't:
LG publicly stated their TVs "do not collect, record, or store ambient conversations."
Gamers Nexus found:
— the TV converts speech to plain text and stores it in on-device logs
— the microphone window stays open 10 to 15 seconds after talking stops, capturing bystanders who never addressed the TV
— the TV recorded room audio while the screen appeared off and the Ethernet cable was unplugged, then exfiltrated the file the moment it reconnected
The security vulnerabilities on top:
Beyond the designed behavior, researchers found remote code execution vulnerabilities in webOS that could allow a compromised TV to be weaponized as a covert listening device.
these sets are in hospitals. waiting rooms. boardrooms. hotels.
a surgeon asked Gamers Nexus where that leaves patient confidentiality.
Gamers Nexus has no answer. neither does LG.
What to do right now:
— disconnect your LG TV from your network entirely. route streaming through an Apple TV, Roku, or Fire Stick instead.
— if you must keep it connected: put it on a separate IoT VLAN or guest network so it cannot reach your other devices.
— disable the built-in microphone in settings.
— check your privacy dashboard and opt out of ACR and ad personalization.
— after every firmware update: recheck all of the above.
Credit to Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and other independent researchers.
— scans your entire home network continuously. in their test: one TV identified 38 unrelated devices including phones, smartwatches, printers, and thermostats belonging to people not involved in the test.
— collects the names and signal strengths of every nearby WiFi network, plus location data. all sent to LG Ad Solutions.
— runs ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) on everything displayed on screen. including HDMI inputs. your laptop, gaming console, or work monitor connected to the TV is being fingerprinted.
— one TV exchanged roughly 4GB of ACR-related data per month.
What the TV does that LG says it doesn't:
LG publicly stated their TVs "do not collect, record, or store ambient conversations."
Gamers Nexus found:
— the TV converts speech to plain text and stores it in on-device logs
— the microphone window stays open 10 to 15 seconds after talking stops, capturing bystanders who never addressed the TV
— the TV recorded room audio while the screen appeared off and the Ethernet cable was unplugged, then exfiltrated the file the moment it reconnected
The security vulnerabilities on top:
Beyond the designed behavior, researchers found remote code execution vulnerabilities in webOS that could allow a compromised TV to be weaponized as a covert listening device.
these sets are in hospitals. waiting rooms. boardrooms. hotels.
a surgeon asked Gamers Nexus where that leaves patient confidentiality.
Gamers Nexus has no answer. neither does LG.
What to do right now:
— disconnect your LG TV from your network entirely. route streaming through an Apple TV, Roku, or Fire Stick instead.
— if you must keep it connected: put it on a separate IoT VLAN or guest network so it cannot reach your other devices.
— disable the built-in microphone in settings.
— check your privacy dashboard and opt out of ACR and ad personalization.
— after every firmware update: recheck all of the above.
Credit to Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and other independent researchers.
41❤️2👃1🤮1
