// THE VERGE — MOBILE & WEB
LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Gamers Nexus gives you another reason to never connect your smart TV to the internet.
Gamers Nexus gives you another reason to never connect your smart TV to the internet.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
LG smart TVs are almost constantly logging and uploading data about owners and their homes, even when offline or on standby mode, according to a new report from YouTube channel Gamers Nexus. The company’s TV sets scan Wi-Fi networks for nearby devices, record audio logs through their microphones, and use audio and video sampling to recognize exactly what you’re watching from across the TV inputs.
Gamers Nexus partnered with fellow YouTubers Level1Techs and independent security researchers for the investigation, which involved testing retail LG OLEDs. Packet captures showed the TVs scanning the local area network for nearby hardware like phones or smartwatches, as well as logging location data and details of nearby Wi-Fi networks, and feeding the information back to LG Ad Solutions. Perhaps more concerningly, the TVs were capable of recording microphone audio when in standby; this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet, with audio files stored offline and uploaded once a connection was restored.
The final piece of the puzzle is Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), tech that uses audio and video data to figure out what you’re actually watching, examining the apps you use through the TV’s own smart interface and the content you connect via HDMI and other ports. ACR isn’t just an LG issue though: A new video from RTINGS digs into how ACR is used by almost every smart TV manufacturer to figure out what you watch.