216 Million LG Smart TVs Called 'Spy TVs' in Gamers Nexus Investigation
216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
Gamers Nexus releases a deep-dive investigation into LG Smart TVs, revealing first-party ACR (automatic content recognition) that tracks viewing and listening habits, with LG Ad Solutions executives admitting on camera that LG "owns the glass." The video also exposes security vulnerabilities that could turn these TVs into covert listening devices, and highlights dark patterns in LG's user agreements.
LG Ad Solutions' executives and leadership saying, on camera, that LG "owns the glass." Not you -- even though you bought it -- but them.
- Animats
Here are LG's contract terms for appliances.[1] They are awful.
Not only can they listen in. You have a contractual requirement to tell everyone in range of an appliance that they may be eavesdropped upon.
CONSENT REQUIREMENT: You acknowledge and agree that it is your sole responsibility to obtain all necessary consents from any third parties whose voices may be captured by the Product and to notify household members and guests that their voices may be captured and processed, in compliance with applicable wiretapping, eavesdropping, and privacy laws. If anyone does not consent, you should disable the microphone or voice features in the settings. LGE disclaims any liability for your failure to obtain such consent or provide such notification.
- korzinka
I've bought an LG Smart TV 5 years ago, read t&c where I was supposed to grant them any data they wanted, decided to disagree and kept all network functions disabled. I was ridiculed by my friends for that. At some point, I thought - maybe I'm really crazy to do so? Who am I, a caveman, a luddite? Oh well, I'm not. Not a bad tv though, many HDMI ports!
- ticulatedspline
I'm surprised this hasn't run afoul of all-party wiretap laws. Even if you could waive your own rights via ToS other people in the house may not have agreed.
Theoretically I could see LG or even the TV's owner being culpable.
I'd love to see that case hit the media. Average citizen jailed over wiretap violations because they let their TV record a guest.
- spockz
Okay. This is insane. First the monitor that uses a windows feature to automatically install a small helper tool with root permissions and then starts showing adds in certain regions. Now a tv that is actually actively snooping around on top of the known fingerprinting. What else is next?
In the previous topic I got ridiculed for not wanting to buy LG anymore because I could use an agent to modify to strip out the offending bits.
But there must be something better than just keeping to buy things that invade our privacy and homes further and further. Which brands aren’t doing this? Sony? They also announced a partnership for the lower end TVs IIRC.
- dillutedfixer
As an owner of 2 LG OLEDs, I am not surprised at all. I neutered these things the first day I was past the return policy. Opened the back and unplugged the WiFi/BT chip, bought a cheap dumb universal remote with no mic in it, disagreed to all T&C in the TV, updated the firmware via USB and just use an AppleTV over HDMI for streaming. Kind of silly to have to go through all of this but hey thats where we are in 2026 in the US. And I am fully aware that I am typing this on an iPhone thats probably doing the same things that this article is talking about LG doing ;-(
- myrmidon
Modems becoming super cheap is gonna be a big problem for this, because those make it even harder to prevent such snooping.
Just imagine having to jam the devices in your own home just to stop them from profiling you.
Better pray to your deer god that modem + data contract is gonna stay more expensive that the expected value from selling more data...
We really need regulation to stop this.
- touwer
Funny, published on a site with 1745 'partners' who fully respect our privacy of course
- mancerayder
After researching a new TV (where it only needs an Apple TV, no so-called smart features for spying purposes) the three contenders were Samsung, LG and Sony Bravia (the higher end models). Samsung was the least trustworthy, having played games with firmware updates and adding telemetry, LG was medium trustworthy, and Sony seemed the least likely. It looks like that heuristic was correct. For the Bravia, I put it on wifi just once temporarily to upgrade the firmware when I bought it, and I'm leaving it disconnected.
It can't just magically connect to an openwifi and update its firmware to start telemetry. It would need a new firmware to even try that.
Folks, never update a TV firmware unless it's necessary.
- semiquaver
The source video is excellent: https://youtu.be/6IFVTcM28KA
I have two LG TVs so this freaks me out a lot. I guess I’m fortunate to have kept their network permanently disconnected (we use Apple TV for smart stuff) but who knows if they don’t do things like scan for open hotspots or connect without permission to networks you previously used to update firmware and then deleted from history.
This company needs to be nuked from orbit. Automatic content recognition is one thing, spying on conversations when switched off is a whole other level of violation.
- 8fingerlouie
My TVs are on the IoT network so that I can control them from Home Assistant, but they're blocked from accessing the internet.
DNS lookups are redirected or blocked (53 redirected to my local DNS resolver, 853 blocked), and DoH is blocked as best effort though it's hard to block HTTP DNS traffic, which again is why the devices are blocked in the firewall.
All streaming is done via AppleTV, which is a platform I trust infinitely more than LG/Samsung/whatever.