■■■■□ Privacy: Your LG TV is eavesdropping on you. It transcribes what you say, copies what is on your screen, and scans every device on your network, and researchers say the collection keeps running after you disconnect it, uploading the moment it reconnects.
LG’s ad-tech arm says it out loud: “We own the glass.” It pitches marketers on the ability to “own the living room,” using data harvested from the TV you paid thousands for.
Gamers Nexus, working with Level1Techs and independent researchers, compromised an LG G5 and turned it into a listening device: it recorded room audio while the screen appeared off and the Ethernet cable was unplugged, then exfiltrated the file once the TV was back online.
LG has publicly said its 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, and that the mic window stays open 10 to 15 seconds after talking stops, sweeping up bystanders who never addressed the TV.
These sets are everywhere: hospitals, waiting rooms, boardrooms, hotels. ACR keeps running even when the TV is a dumb HDMI monitor, and a compromised set can pull the audio of a call off that HDMI feed. A surgeon asked Gamers Nexus where that leaves patient confidentiality.
Researchers advise disconnecting LG TVs from any network.