Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG’s TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that “Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work.”
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” and that wake-word detection is all processed locally. However, the word “continuously” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations long after one would assume its AI assistant had stopped listening.
There is also a response to that response up on Gamers Nexus and its something along the lines of: 🖕 + going through the legal agreements detailing what they (may) do with your data + more 🖕
I have two of them…but I only use them for streaming from my plex server so they’re completely isolated from the internet. As far as I’m concerned I’m happy if it never connects to the internet.
But no, next TV will most definitely not be an LG… Though I’m not sure what the options are, all TV’s are smart TV’s these days… Fuck it, maybe I’ll just find a 65" dumb monitor and put it on the wall.
From looking around out of curiosity when this stuff about LG TVs came out, Samsung sells explicitly Non-Smart 65" Hospitality Displays, but they cost $1030 (US), which is over twice as much as their consumer TV with the same specs.
Also somebody pointed out Spectre TVs (which seem to only be sold in the US, and I couldn’t really find an European equivalent, the closest being a Spanish brand whose largest non-smart TV is only 40").
I couldn’t actually find any large dumb monitor except for the ultra-wide curved ones, but I only looked around for half a hour or so.
Personally, the way I already use my TV (wired to a Mini-PC running Linux and Kodi, which has Series and Movies as video files as well as using free IPTV for live TV, and I even have a wireless remote for it so it’s used just like you would a traditional media player or Smart TV) is already perfect for a dumb monitor.
(A more straightforward way to get a privacy respecting setup like this would be to install LibreELEC on something like a Pi or a Mini-PC and get the same kind of wireless remote as I have - my setup is only as it is because I didn’t know about LibreELEC back when I put it together plus it also works as a home server as well as my home NAS, since an N100 Mini-PC is very overpowered to just work as a Media Player).
It really seems that the only way to keep at least some privacy is to ditch corporate devices altogether and just put together your own media player box (which, as I wrote above, is pretty straightforward with something like LibreELEC).
but they cost $1030 (US), which is over twice as much as their consumer TV with the same specs.
Subsidized by ads, makes it cheaper. Personally I am willing to pay it (to some degree)
I couldn’t actually find any large dumb monitor except for the ultra-wide curved ones, but I only looked around for half a hour or so.
Chromecasts are not able to cope with anything other than 16:9. :(
(A more straightforward way to get a privacy respecting setup like this would be to install LibreELEC on something like a Pi or a Mini-PC and get the same kind of wireless remote as I have - my setup is only as it is because I didn’t know about LibreELEC back when I put it together plus it also works as a home server as well as my home NAS, since an N100 Mini-PC is very overpowered to just work as a Media Player).
What does it matter if TVs like LG do ACR on HDMI content?
For actual privacy it requires at the very least a display with nothing other than hardware to decode a video signal.
Oh yeah, you want dumb everything else beyond the little box that you control which has the “smarts” and something like Linux and Kodi on it.
Even having Windows on that box would pretty much guarantee you have no privacy.
As it so happens, in my experience of over a decade using Media Players to play videos on my TV (since well before Android TV and Smart TVs) it’s even the most economic option: the life-cycle of the hardware that plays videos is a lot tighter than the life-cycle of the actual display - unless you’re running after the bleeding edge, you more often have to replace the video playing hardware because it doesn’t support newer video codecs than then display - so it’s cheaper to have those things be separate so that you don’t have to replaced the whole thing every few years just because the cheaper part - the processor - can’t decode newer codecs and instead can just replace the “smarts” and not spend any money on the stuff that still works fine (and is actually more expensive).
Further, if one does like I do and actually use that box for more things (my Media Player Mini-PC is also a home server and home NAS), that’s yet another way that such a setup ends up being cheaper because it’s being used to do the work of 2 or 3 things.
I suspect even if one pays twice as much for a non-smart “Hospitality Display” to have alongside your own self-made Media Player box, it’ll still end up cheaper because in 5-10 years’ time that display will still be just fine even while that box might need upgrading due to new video codecs.
I have a 43 inch samsung hospitality tv on the merchant ship I work on and it’s the absolute worst display made since… The brightness is beyond terrible, colors are beyond dull and the speakers have more in common with the nokia 3310 than anything made past 2007.
Don’t bother. Find a decent tv where you can remove the wifi functionality from physically or via software (jailbreaking, service remotes and such).
Also I was in japan and some hotels actually had some decent custom software (eg. "Hospitality) tvs that might be able to be found … Somewhere.
Has anyone with an open WiFi been close enough to your house for the TV to see it? Because that thing is scanning all the time trying to find open internet access.
Still hard to see what is actually sent since it’s all over encrypted channels. To some extent you can look at the amount of data that is being sent and infer from that what might be actually transmitted. Say if the amount of data seems to match what is expected of uploading voice recordings.
If any of GN’s claims were false, it’d be a very serious case of false allegations. LG could easily sue them, win quickly, get a couple million dollars in damages, and more.
The fact that they’re not suing tells us all we need to know.
From just the BSSID these TVs are collecting they know your precise fucking location and can pinpoint it based on signal strength to the nearest street. WiFi Positioning System is cursed. Amazingly, BSSID can also tell you who the customer is based on “public” records since ISPs keep track of this kind of thing when they hand out free routers.
Gamerz Nexus made a follow up video going over what they said and how their initial statements were basically "we did not", but then they kept talking and confirmed basically everything.
After the recent controversies, I added a bunch of blockers for LG trackers to my pi-hole, to stop my 8 year old TV from collecting data. It blocked a lot at first, but then suddenly nothing, I investigated a bit and saw that it had started sending only to their Vietnamese servers, which were missing from my blocklist.
I personally have no misconceptions about the intrusive data collecting, aggregating, identifying and reselling that LG is doing with their residential customers via their televisions, nor about the entitled way LG and its corporate representatives and officers have spoken about their right to gather it.
“We own the glass,” they repeat, as though that means they also own whatever is spoken beyond the glass in the same house. In reality, they own neither.
Nor am I misled by LG’s weasel words that address problems not ever specifically raised, while completely swerving around actual problems publicly demonstrated with their products.
But I will say they are laboring under a serious misconception if they think I will ever buy one from them. They can fuck ALL the way off with that shit.
I have an LG C3 that I never connected to Wifi or plugged an ethernet cable into. I only use it with my nvidia shield running lineage OS, am I still affected by this / anything I should do?
It’s not unreasonable to assume it may have been connected to the internet unbeknownst to you if there’s been an unsecured network close by that your tv could connect to.
An attacker could (and gamers Nexus demonstrated this) connect to your television and read transcripts of things you’ve said in your house when you didn’t realise your tv was listening. If you’ve never used the voice recognition wake word around your tv you might be ok, but an attacker can also change the wake word to something you might casually say (they showed this too)
If you do own an LG tv it’s worth watching the gamers Nexus video to fully be aware of what is happening.
Nah, they used the wrong one. It’s not a big deal, but I like having easy ways to help remember common misspellings or weird things. Like on two axis graphs, the X and Y coordinates sometimes get confusing. So, in order to remember which coordinate is which, X and then Y, and then you have to RUN (horizontal, X) before you JUMP (vertical, Y). I heard that from some teacher when I was a kid and never forgot.
Wait, I’m the guy you corrected. What’s the easy way to remember affected vs effected? You just told me which is which, but do you have a trick like you do for the X vs Y axis on a graph?
BTW I see the “but a dumb tv” advice, but what are some dumb tvs in 2026?
I only see smart TVs in store, and I know the side I’d look for signage TVs but I don’t know if they have good audio with a sound bar, or good colour presentation.
I bought a 50-something-inch Sceptre about 5-6 years ago for like $200 that is just a display with inputs. I believe they are only sold through Walmart, and I have no idea if they are still available or not.
The response, “Look Bryan, you should be the last one to accuse anyone of terrible things when you just casually keep a vibrating replica of smurfette’s genitals in your guest bedroom, in the bottom drawer of the left nightstand.”
One thing I think a lot of people tend to miss when dealing with executive interviews, PR statements, and company advertising is that often times how a company defines a given term and how the actual dictionary and everyone in the world defines that term are not the same thing unless it is legally required.
Textbook examples:
Telsa, Musk, and self driving:
Musk and Tesla define it as essentially what everyone else called lane assist. Then they have “full self driving” for what is supposed to be the thing everyone else would think of as self driving.
OpenAI, Sam Altman, and AGI (artificial general intelligence):
No one in the AI industry has an agreed upon definition of what AGI even means. The AI labs just throw it out there for hype and funding rounds and tweak the meaning to them as they need. To most normal people I would suspect AGI means “a machine that knows its a machine and is at least as smart as the average person”.
Point being when LG says “ its TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” that can mean literally anything they can twist human communication methods to mean in their specific context. And it is usually the one that makes them the most money.
PR statements always make me think of the sample sentence “I never said you did that,” which can have different implications depending on which word is emphasized.
Haha very happy my LG C1 has never met an Ethernet cable or WiFi connection but honestly wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’re doing shady things anyway like trying to access unlocked connections or recording everything for the future anyway
I bought one of their monitors a few years ago. Regretted that purchase on day one. It had a stuck magenta pixel that never went away. I should’ve returned it but I would’ve had to drive all the way back to microcenter. Now it’s affected by shit like this. The future is dumb.
A pre-dispute contractual clause that removes those consumer jurisdiction rights is generally restricted.
Separately, under the EU Unfair Contract Terms Directive, a standard term that effectively excludes or hinders a consumer’s ability to take legal action can be considered unfair and therefore not binding on the consumer.
“allegations”? the thing they state to do to in their EULA, privacy agrement and whatcer other garbage no one reads? what else now? google spies on you? apple spies on you? water is wet?
I have an LG tv and I use the Prime streaming app. I recently started working out after about a year of not. Never googled anything or told anyone or anything, just said out loud to myself to get out my floor mat for pushups and whatnot, and not just use my rug. The very next day, I’m suddenly getting Kachava ads on Prime again, which is a healthy liquid meal thing.
There are commercial displays that don’t have spyware / connectivity, but they tend to have significantly lower refresh rates / HDR / etc. even if they are 4k. And they’re several times the price of consumer TVs, at least in part because they aren’t being subsidized by selling them at a loss to make money on ads.
Unfortunately, it’s either this or get a smart TV and never connect it to the internet and use a streaming device or computer. However with the computer option, some platforms like Netflix won’t let you stream 4K without meeting their strict requirements.
Or just become a pirate and never deal with streaming services again.
