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IANAL but without concent I think LG is comitting a crime here. The owner who ostensibly agreed to obtain concent through the ToS might be breaking their agreement, but wouldn't that be a separate issue?

ToS and other click licenses have been making shit up for way too long.

What's absurd is that this doesn't void the terms by default. There should be limits to what companies can put in their ToS beyond which those terms aren't enforceable.

tempted to go into my nearest big box electronics store and then sue them when they don't tell me the LG tv's they have on display are eavesdropping on me.

I have an LG TV. It has been pestering me with those licensing agreements from time to time, but interestingly enough, I was only required to agree to fairly reasonable basics, everything else I just ignored and left for later.

I'm guessing this is an oversight and the TV does record, but then this is criminal. But, nobody will bother to prosecute them I guess...

Can that kind of clause really be enforceable? It really doesn't seem legal in any jurisdiction I'm aware of. (not a lawyer)

When do you get to see these terms?

The discussion seems to imply that they are seen only after purchase (I haven't read the article).

If that is so they are void and unenforceable in most jurisdictions as you cannot agree to something in a contract that you cannot read.

Are such terms enforceable in the US?

Is that actually for smart tvs? The first paragraph includes "the products you may access or otherwise connect to via the ThinQ mobile application (not including Smart TVs)" and "These Terms of Use do not apply to any other LG products or services, including Smart Media Products."

[EDIT] Smart Media products terms appear to be at https://us.lgappstv.com/main/terms (for comparison here's UK: https://gb.lgappstv.com/main/terms, there are some other EU versions available for e.g. Germany but I imagine UK terms should be quite close and more accessible for most of readers)

But isn't it the same as Facebook letting you consent (without actually reading the ToS) that your friends on that freshly-uploaded photo agreed to appear online and have their face scanned?

Imagine being the lawyer signing this off. Imagine being the head of product signing this off.

What were they thinking? And most importantly: what TV are they using at home?

Can you actually even turn and keep the microphone off or does it toggle itself back on like Apple's Wifi and Bluetooth one-touch toggle off for now buttons?

I wonder how much money LG makes from all of these practices, and if they stopped doing it what impact to cost of a TV would be?

What about the stores where the TV is sold?

And yet what lawmakers focused on was getting your consent for a cookie on a website you were only going to visit once.

It just reads as legal boilerplate. How else can voice recognition listen for a wake word without being able to process everything it hears.

I have a similar reaction from folks when I don't trust services/devices. Most telling moment was when I refused to upload my license to LinkedIn because I lost 2FA (token on phone, phone destroyed). Microsoft assured me they would "delete the license as soon as it was verified". I've written too many software systems for too many companies, and I do not believe them.

Of course, they'd outsourced to AU10TIX, which did retain the licenses, and got hacked: https://www.404media.co/id-verification-service-for-tiktok-u...

That's from 2024, but we just had a larger breach with IDScan this week.

Sorry for the digression, but the common thread is how much to trust these companies, and my conclusion after dealing with them for many years is they will lie, cheat, and steal to get whatever they want. Some paranoia is warranted, I think.

It’s okay to be a luddite. Not everything needs to have an interface.

Got into a spat with a manager at my apartment complex because I refused to install their app just to deal with a maintenance issue.

He was like, “I don’t see the problem, you have to use the Latch app to open your apartment door.”

To which I replied, “No, I have the door keypad code memorized.”

Just like I don’t need an app to make a log of exit/entry history in a backend database just to enter my apartment via a Bluetooth lock…

…I should not have to install their app to make my apartment livable.

Indeed, my argument was convincing enough to have a resolution which didn’t include installing their app.

Nah, you're not crazy. I'm also someone who actually reads terms documents, because I find that they're often the only thing that will be truthful about a company's intentions.

And keeping it completely disconnected from the internet should be the default, in my opinion.

Same. And one of my requirements was that i can use HDMI ports without agreeing to TOS. Most android TVs do not allow this at all, LG did.

We replaced our old TV recently with an LG and are really liking it. We do not let it on our network though and keep networking functionality disabled. It's basically a monitor for our Kubuntu Linux laptop sitting behind it. We stream with Chrome and use a mouse and the TV remote for audio. Once in a while we actually watch something on TV itself too. It'd be nice I guess if the built in TV app had DVR but if it does; I couldn't figure out how to make it work. No great loss there.

This. Why would you even connect TV to the network?

It is well known for like 5 years. Smsrt TVs go through your movies library, and upload screenshots and filenames to internet.

Some will start showing ads after firmware upgrade.

I had a similar experience regarding Facebook. People would always remark that they thought someone who knew about tech would surely have an account.

People don't say that so much anymore.

It's worth remembering that for all the animosity they face, they did what they told you they were going to do when they asked for your permission to do it.

Is there a list of all LG tracking services and external DNS endpoints?

I'd just block them - and keep local streaming and remote control working

edit: just found out WebOS doesn't support DoH/DoT so nextdns won't work.

I wonder if one of the public dns providers got LG blocklisted natively with specific IP

I usually go for Samsung TVs, but same, I never give it network access. I use a Fire Stick that gets its power from the TV's USB port. Best as I can tell, turning off the TV turns off power to the Fire Stick.

I think the worst part is that most devices give you no option to disagree.

I bought a DJI action camera, I had watched a bunch of reviews and read the store page. Yet only after buying and turning it on did I discover the device only allows you to use it 5 times before connecting it to the internet and signing up for an account.

There aren’t even any features that require this, it simply bricks itself after the 5th use until you sign up and agree to the terms.

My in-laws were so proud of themselves. I came home one day and they told me they figured out how to connect my TV to the network so that I don’t have to use my Apple TV if I don’t want. I had to take a few deep breaths to keep from yelling. I am very happy with my TCL tv but I trust it about as far as I can throw my father in law.

A few models/firmware combinations have found to look for public hotspots when you don't agree to give them network.

I have an LG C5 OLED and do not give it internet access. It does not nag, every non-internet feature works fine, the interface is clean, and my Apple TV works just fine.

Mine is still attached to the network, but I’ve turned off all the ad/customisation &AI stuff. Seems to work fine, no ads etc. though usually I’m using it simply as a screen for the AppleTV.

I do have it isolated from other devices on my network, though.

I keep my off-brand smart TV offline as well, partly just because the next update could brick it. I just use it as a monitor. External Google TV box is the way to go if you want smart functionality.

I didn’t care much about data collected but I found that with every update it becomes worse and worse objectively. I had to cut it from in internet so doesn’t get completely unusable

Also, those "smart" TVs aren't really smart, besides that data grabbing, and are really slow. So connecting some mini PC is the way to go.

Only give the permissions you want the device/agent/human to use - no more.

Same for anything whether you trust it or not (or somewhere in between).

Same, disabled internet access on my LG years ago using the router config. It’s good that it at least doesn’t stop working without internet

Doesn't HDMI have built in Ethernet these days? So any HDMI cable of a certain specification is also a network cable.

I remember these things being discussed a while ago on here, how TVs use their own hard coded DNS ("for safety") rather than any network provided DNS (to avoid filtered DNS ala PiHole), how there's Ethernet in a HDMI cable, how other wireless networks are tried, and how eventually they'll go the car route and just embed a wireless modem in the device.

Just thinking, if this is an issue, how you can dare to buy a modern car with embedded SIM card and GPS? :)

We need a HIPAA for consumer devices.

Yeah. I own an LG TV also of about the same vintage. It doesn't get to talk to the Internet.

> I was ridiculed by my friends for that.

The sad part about the privacy discourse is that people not only don't care, but they would argue for the invading party. And I am not talking about your average teenager looking for their next brainrot fix, but highly educated and extremely intellegent people!

I've long since gave up trying to talk to people about these issues. Which unfortunately means I'll surrender to exposing myself to this plague to some degree, considering how herd immunity principles apply here as well.

> Not a bad tv though, many HDMI ports!

that's not a plus, tho

I think the insane part is that this is not criminal and the executives are not jailed for it.

I would like to send vast amounts of garbage data to the LG servers. They aren’t being respectful of our bandwidth and data, we don’t need to be respectful of theirs.

This also applies incentives in the correct direction. Their database of customer information becomes less valuable if there’s bad information in it. Disconnecting your TV from the internet doesn’t affect LG, feeding them bad data does.

Well, it’s a smart TV. I would assume with extreme prejudice that every single one of them is doing stuff like this and worse until proven innocent. Based on everything I’ve read about these things it seems the most reasonable stance.

> 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.

Jesus fucking Christ.

>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.

Smart people need to band together to advocate their state governments to make commercial mass surveillance for any purpose a criminal offense (not just banning, making it a crime).

It's insane, but it's not like it's not known, personally, each time we have a party at home with friends, we always unplug the TV for this reason, it's out of doubt but it's normal to doubt as it's proprietary and has a microphone, so it's a bit obvious that it might be recording and processing data somewhere. The same as I would never trust an average phone around if I'm having a private conversation.

Blackbox+Mic = Not private.

To consider something secure software wise, it involves so many layers, and almost none of those are present with a Smart TV, so it IS considered insecure by anyone having privacy standards.

Yeah, just keep buying the poisonous breakfast serial. It's easy to pick out the brown bits of rat poison /s

On top of that, the first few minutes of the video suggests it captures your neighbors' device and IP information.

I'm sure the ToS has some BS about you being required to inform any guests, but what if your TV is just recording your neighbors because they are close enough?

Just wait, I'm sure the "solution" will be that TVs start displaying reminders that you're being recorded...

Is our inability to innovate in technology really so bad that we have to just chase more and more spying? Consumers don't want these things. Why can't we innovate on things that consumers actually want? Remember, there was a time where we could build good technology, tech that people wanted, and make buckets of money doing it. That should be our goal, not some cyberpunk dystopia. Honestly it feels like anytime we try to innovate now some manager says "don't make things complicated" or some other dumb excuse, but maybe worse is that peers (other engineers) say "but what's the value" (they always stress that they mean monetary, not utility)? Feels like monkeys attacking each other for trying to get the banana...

The TV's license agreement attempts to shift the burden onto the TV's owner. Taken at face value, it's the owner who is guilty of recording people without their consent.

How do guests/children/people in public spaces consent to it? It's a gross violation.

Really good question. For instance, TX is a one-party consent state. If the TV is recording what's happening in the living room with nobody's knowledge, that seems like a very clear violation of "one party in the conversation needs to know it's being recorded." IANAL

I bet there are an army of lawyers in those states preparing class action lawsuits right now.

I'm pretty sure Attorney Generals will also join the fray in due time.

This crap needs to be shut down hard.

Listening https://m.xkcd.com/1807/

Whether or not you iPhone is also doing that is irrelevant. Two surveillance pathways is still inherently worse than one.

Why not just disconnect it from internet?

Yep, I do the same. There’s no reason for the tv to do anything smart. It exists to display appletv and ps5.

In the future they could make it refuse to boot without all the "required" hardware, like BT/wifi module.

Why wait until after the return policy? Also what firmware did you update to? Also if you could point to a video where it shows how to do all these things that would be amazing

GrapheneOS is such a breath of fresh air, truly you don't need the crApple device.

GamerNexus has been so good at their investigation work.

I know people who complain the channel does not talk more about Hardware and Games as much, but we live in a timeline that personal hardware and games will not be ours anymore, just see how prohibitive hardware prices are today.

Probably best to treat the wifi password as compromised and change it after the TV has had access to it. But I suppose there's nothing you can do to prevent it from accessing open wifi networks that happen to be nearby.

\#BanAdvertising, my friends. It sounds absurd until you think about it for a minute. If billboards and vice ads and this sort of monitoring should be banned, shouldn't it all?

I believe we should push for legislation that prohibits the sale of customer data to third parties. Websites can use the data on their customers but they cannot share it with anyone else. Because aggregators are selling it cross-border after which you lose track and all control over it.

The article is just a summary of the original reporting from Gamers Nexus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

Respect for the consumer has long been gone generally except for a few brands.

I am still wondering why consumer respecting brands are not emerging more and thriving.

As always - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

There is a very I-am-very-smart aspect to these predictable sorts of comments. And weirdly they always seem oddly intended to diminish the core concern being addressed.

"Oh your TV is listening to you and mapping your network and exfiltrating your data? Yeah, well, look at that website that has some ads on it! Boom!

Give up. The future is lost. Don't sweat the wiretapping TV."

>and it will connect to any open WiFi

I've seen this claim made over and over again for various smart TVs, but so far I haven't seen any concrete evidence of this, only random speculation.

I'd rather open it up and remove/destroy just the network card.

(I don't have to do so though because my tv is 20 years old.)

Block it on your router.

If that happened would any of that data get tied back to you? If you haven't created any accounts or signed into anything.

Imagine the amount of power they have now with AI, by recording the conversations of half the planet. Imagine the amount of money they would be able to make in the stock market with this data, by following the trends of these conversations. I'm sure the hedge funds have already been doing this for 20 years.

That's really just the tip of the iceberg though. They'll be able to build very sophisticated models of every person, digitally fingerprinted to their voice and location and devices that follows them forever.

I want my data deleted from their servers. This is seriously messed up and heads need to roll.

Did the video actually say this? I scrubbed through and found it interesting, but from what I gathered, microphones were only activated when AI voice input was used. Granted, there was no investigation on how trigger happy the beginning of recording might actually be. Did I misinterpret?

This should be grounds for a class-action lawsuit. It’s lying, it’s scummy, it’s an abuse of consumer trust, and it’s written off LG as a company to do business with. I’m surprised we aren’t already seeing DPAs in the EU take on LG.

Disconnect the u.fl to the antenna and it’ll be hard for it to transmit data unless you live next door to a cell tower.

I see the same thing with advertising. The cost of a banner ad in real life is always decreasing. Now every road intersection, shop aisle, plane seat etc has a huge super bright billboard blasting ads at people who can't realistically avoid it.

My house already jams cell signals at least

All of your blocking still doesn't change the fact that your LG TV is actively trying to scan your local hardware, gathering IP-addresses of devices, wi-fi names and signal strengths, creating digital finger prints of the audio and video projected on your screen, recording audio through the internal microphone, even when the TV is in standby or without an internet connection, saving the collected data locally and uploading to LG Ad Solutions as soon as the TV is connected to the internet.

And then your neighbor spins up an unprotected network or something like xfinity which they could have a deal with and it connects there and phones home anyways.

That's great that you know how to do that, but LG and others know that also. They don't care that a miniscule amount of ppl can do it, they care about the 99.9999% that don't. Thid should be dealt with legislation and very high fees, sufficient to discourage anyone to do it.

   > My TVs are on the IoT network so that I can control them from Home Assistant, but they're blocked from accessing the internet. NS lookups are redirected or blocked (53 redirected to my local DNS resolver, 853 blocked),[...]

Unfortunately, from LG's surveillance capitalism point of view, the 0.001% of LG owners that can even think about doing that isn't even a drop in the bucket. They don't care about any one individual, and the vast majority of individuals don't care or understand what LG is doing as long as they can watch TV.

It's only a matter of time before another Cambridge Analytica situation pops up, except with better tools and vastly more data. Or maybe something we can't even imagine yet enabled by simply re-purposing ad-tech into something political and malevolent? Some people will be wise to it, of course, but if enough are caught up in it, it won't matter, we all lose as a whole.

Congratulations but I also dislike this type of comment because that is not a solution, a workaround that doesn't happen for 99% of the population.

Soon you won't be able to IoT network or block these devices as they begin to partner with Amazon and the likes that sell Internet for near-by IoT devices. Then your only option then is physically removing / de soldering radios from the board.

Laws needed, like yesterday.

Blocking DNS doesn't do much if the device isn't resolving hostnames and just pushes data to a bunch of preconfigured IPs tho...

If you're streaming via AppleTV, why do you need to give the TV itself access to the network?

Not only the telescreens, but my impression of the world in 1984 is that the surveillance depended on an army of watchers at the opposite end. Today we have models of all kinds: classification models, speech to text models, large language models, etc. Surveillance with our devices is automated, no human army of watchers needed!

The thought police will be after you now for mocking them!

Yep. LG was reading Orwell and were like. Wow, great idea! Let's do it.

You posted a Youtube link with a share ID tracker in it: ?si=oVqX6NtkxPmqh6R-

I find your "summary" much harder to read and understand, though.

I prefer the original article and the net-benefit of a google-linked video to explain things that already were properly explained, is rather small, at best, in my opinion.

>In an age where AI can search vast amounts of data having something in your home or workplace turning what it hears into text looks like a problem waiting to happen.

That's understating the problem. With or without AI, this should be cause enough to shut down a company or at least their specific product division.

>E.g. As soon as someone proves LG, Samsung, etc. recorded and stored credit card details and knowingly have weak security this is going to be a massive business liability.

They're going to be fine. A slap on the wrist at best.

The value of this data to the NSA, Mossad etc is probably the only thing keeping it secure.

Never in human history has a government had the means to simultaneously spy on millions of people, to use everyday private conversations to categorise them into various threats to the state, and better yet these tech companies can still sell the commercially valuable side of this to advertisers.

> E.g. As soon as someone proves LG, Samsung, etc. recorded and stored credit card details and knowingly have weak security this is going to be a massive business liability.

My tinfoil hat believes that they've already accounted for this as the price of doing business. They will have already budgeted for the fines that they might incur, pay them off and continue as normal while people become accustomed to it.

>this is going to be a massive business liability.

No. this is going to go "unnoticed" or at least unactioned. These are surveilance devices - compromising their value as source of surveilance is neither in the interest of industry (who are selling and buying the surveilance) or government (who are buying and acting on it). The age of shame is over. Current world goernments have flourished under the premise of being terrible, horrible, awful, evil enterprises that do bad for the sake of either being bad or enriching the bad - a consumer device with a ToS that says it will spy on you spying on people is nothing now. Laws be damned, because laws mean nothing now. These devices bery well may soon be the only lawfully available devices in the consumer market precisely because of their surveilance capabilities. Governments are reluctanty catching up to the capabilities of digital technologies, and they're finding them more useful now than ever before. We will be burning witches again before we ever prosecute tech companies for doing bad things.

Based on historical records, I would say not much will happen to these companies. Interested to see what the EU will do though

At that point network isolation stops looking like a privacy preference and starts looking like an adversarial relationship with a product you own

You would think that would matter, that they’re basically violating all known PII/HIPAA/GDPR/National security standards and god knows what else, but I expect at most some class action down the line.

At the same time an average citizen can sue and win against these corporations. I never ended up Suing because all companies settled once I showed the evidence. So try it out. Will get expensive for them to use lawyers against ai and still lose.

thank you for the link!

And it's the only device that "normies" own that has reliable power and reliable internet 24/7. This means you can use it for nefarious purposes, even wastefully so, and it won't show up as suspicious battery drain or prematurely hitting the cell plan's data cap.

For a lot of hacker type stuff (esp. botnets and residential proxies), this is exactly what you want.

I used to believe that piracy couldn't come back in a significant way because people don't want to use computers any more, and phones are a really bad fit for p2p, even if running some hypothetical non-walled-garden OS that wouldn't have issues with that sort of thing. I entirely failed to appreciate the impact of cheap Android TV boxes here.

But also

4. Every single fucked up thing it did was indeed listed in their customer agreement and privacy policy

Reads like a smear campaign in my opinion. Watch for new American product launches in the next few days.

> Folks, never update a TV firmware unless it's necessary.

Why would a TV ever need a firmware update? Either it works out of the box or it doesn't and I return it. I never updated the firmware of my PC monitor either.

Just keep the TV completely disconnected and use something like an Apple TV.

Some brands have TVs share Wi-Fi with each other, so even if you don't connect it to Wi-Fi, your neighbour's TV will silently share with yours.

> a day when TVs contain cellular or satellite modems so you can’t block the telemetry

finally my startup of faraday-cage rooms will boom /j

this is the same behavior as the secret police in 2026 USA, the biggest customers of the ad tech companies.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/targeted-advertising-g...

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5752369/ice-surveillanc...

how do you know it is for ads? how do you know it will always be only for ads if it now is?

Can someone confirm this part of it? I'm highly, highly dubious that these TVs are sending back random ambient conversation -- for one thing, it would be a truly monstrously-huge stream of data, no?

I certainly believe that it sends back data when you use voice commands, ofc (both for advertising and product improvement). But this would be the first real case of something that's been a 100% false conspiracy theory for over a decade, which feels... unlikely. Kinda like someone finding a Sasquatch.

FTC? They might be doing it FOR the FTC.

I wonder whether it's better to connect it to a network that is then firewalled off from the internet. That may prevent it from looking for alternatives.

> Only a matter of time before they ship with cell modems

I do wonder about the hackability of this. Will it be a purely telemetry connection or will it be able to stream video via that connection as well? (not that data costs as much these days as it used to). Can we piggy back the rest of our internet data on this connection? LG TV as modem/router?

Will they include GPS, so they can also connect your home address to the profile they're creating on you? Location-specific advertising value would make that answer: yes!

Other TVs like Samsung are using a peer to peer mesh network with nearby devices instead. LG might do the same.

Seriously. My fucking CPAP machine ships with a 5g modem so my info can be easily available to my physician. Can’t turn it off, no clue if I’m even paying for it given how obtuse the billing situation is with how the company charges health insurance

I do the same thing. My concern is that if somebody makes the decision to spin up an open wireless network it’ll just try to connect to that and upload all of the telemetry it’s been holding onto.

I’m considering opening mine and taking a desoldering braid to both the RJ45 and wireless antenna solder joints. This might break the TV, but at this point if it does I’m ready to just throw it in the trash and find a commercial display.

I bought a television. I didn’t buy an invitation to be watched in the name of surveillance capitalism and until America gets its shit together with data privacy and consumer protection laws this is just going to continue happening.

I haven’t had a chance to watch this yet, but I did watch the preview and all of Steve’s latest work has been great so I’m sure it’ll be great.

So how do we stop this? Laws? Who do we write to?

i honestly don’t believe i’m being jaded when i say this: there will be no consequences. in this current moment, companies can treat us however they like.

again, i don’t think that’s hyperbolic or jaded, i think it’s much more based in reality than the opposite.

unless this VLAN doesn't allow internet access the issue persists. And if it doesn't, not connecting it would be the more logical choice.

I'm inclined to believe the shutdowns were a bug rather than an extremely patient friend waiting for the perfect gameplay moment. But modern TVs having enough remote-management machinery that the prank theory isn't immediately absurd is not exactly reassuring.

Did it ever turn itself off after you made those settings changes?

Most tvs now come with auto off kou have to cancel with a button press, prob just that.

Normally they show a warning, but i just got a new tcl, and it’s warning is very short leading to shutdown if you don’t pause quick enough to reset it

And those jurisdictions need to have people not susceptible to bribery or extortion by the corporations making those data collection devices. That's a big ask.

Legislators in every jurisdiction seem to have more to gain with the data collection than without.

If its not automatic it's incredibly shaky ground in the EU. I'm sure Apple, Amazon and Google got more than a slap on the wrist just for storing a few seconds after the wake word before.

Raspberry Pi + LibreElec. It supports CEC, so you can control it with your TV's remote. Or you could download Kore from F-droid to control it over Wifi.

I have a "Homatics Box R 4K Plus" with CoreELEC/Kodi installed. The UX is then determined by your Kodi skin or apps. I wouldn't exactly recommend that box for ease of installation, but it works. It only needed to boot once into Android, annoyingly requiring an internet connection for setup. Since then it only runs CoreELEC. Works via HDMI CEC via the TV remote, which is still a bit annoying, because they had space for a dozen branded streaming provider buttons, but pause/forward etc. are on a mode switch button that overloads the navigation buttons.

For far too many options, see this massive sheet for Kodi support, including newer formats like Dolby Vision and HDR variants: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uyuw_1dADsRw7u1LGW6q...

Overall I am pretty happy with Kodi on my Android box. 90% of the content is streamed from a local Jellyfin server, so I can't comment on how well it works with DRM media. It occasionally [1] seems to hang, requiring a power reset. The next time it does, I will hook it up to a smart plug to simplify that as well. If you are into tinkering, CoreELEC is based on Linux and you have some basic tools already installed with more available from the addon repos. I have SSHed into LibreELEC to debug network issues with iperf and on a previous iteration to kick over Kodi with systemctl restart.

[1] gonna say less than once a month, I don't remember when it last happened

This definitely requires "extra mile" kind of work, but it sounds like what you want: https://youtu.be/nROKp0BpFek?si=msJJrdpq143W3nEf

> My LG is completely offline

Are you sure? They will seek out open WiFi and other neighboring LG TVs as relays.

Apple TV.

>Obviously they'll get away with this in the US

I'm not sure about that. Although this reporting is aimed at the everyman, the problem they describe is far more impactful for elites and corporations. This is pervasive violation of their personal, corporate and legally privileged privacy, and is a vector for systematic corporate espionage. So I suspect US Senators will soon get phone calls from donors really upset about this.

"Disconnect" is not enough. They will seek out open WiFi and other available LG TVs as relays. You need to remove the WiFi card or at least the antenna.

Why trust apple?

Sent from iPhone (for now)

How does that make this right? And that a device has the potential to spy with an update doesn’t mean it does or will.

Of course, the AVR will be able to snoop and send what is available. Any smart fridges, ovens, appliances, whatever can. Doesn’t mean that they or should. Also doesn’t mean we should just lie down and give up.

There are multiple recordings of LG executives saying "we own the glass (the TV)", referring to the "LG household", and how they can serve targeted ads by recognizing every device on the network. Just watch the video...

The head of LG ads was banned from serving in a public company for 10 years by the SEC for fraud...

Yes, unfortunately the investigative video is implying (or explicitly stating) malice on every detail they discovered, which is harming the overall message IMO.

They hacked the TV OS, then used the TV UI to do a web search with voice-input and observed (still on the UI!) that the voice input didn't stop immediately on silence but kept extending the search prompt with everything said [0].

The OS-hack was irrelevant for this, the whole sensationalism that a listening process is running (and therefore the device is listening to everything) is just drama added to the sober fact that someone started voice-input, the input field is still displayed on the bottom of the UI and keeps getting populated with new input.

There is an important message in this about security hardening, privacy, data protection, but this conspiracy theory that everything is made to spy on you is not helping...

[0] https://youtu.be/6IFVTcM28KA?si=OCmfai2KXSaQt1Bk&t=2958

> There's also a fair bit of arrogance from LG: "We own the glass..."

The execs shown in those clips used some pretty revealing language. I also had to do a double-take when they described a customer's (compromised) house as an "LG household," where they "know who's in [it], we know which devices are there... we know how to extend that reach into mobile" and tell advertisers they can "own the living room."

The sense of entitlement is so over-the-top that it's difficult to distinguish from satire.

   Are they doing this with all of their other devices as well? Monitors, 

LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956688

LG monitors installing adware on Windows PCs | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48953226

They will once they've killed television and they'll get back to the net.

The best simple and easy answer is "Never connect your television to the internet, ever."

Every speaker is also a microphone

I’m unaware of any projects trying to make a dumb tv, but I like the idea. You can start with rootmy.tv and research from there.

You're not wrong, but you could ask your favorite LLM to interact with the LG API's to switch the input for you. At least for my case, it was ~10 minutes of work to develop a small tray app that looks for a specific USB device and switches the TV input if it gets inserted. I don't really even touch the remote anymore

IIRC, most wifi enabled televisions have internal antennae. Remove that (or otherwise disable it) and you significantly improve your security posture by ensuring the radio can't hold a connection beyond the TV bezels.

Apps, browsers and "smart" features are disposable software, but a good panel can remain useful for a decade. Makes you wish manufacturers treated the smart layer as optional from the start.

The tradeoff is picture quality. Those panels are dumb and also bad. That's one of the main problems with the marketplace. The best displays are tied to some shady practices like the one in the OP.

We bought a new tv two years ago and I spent probably a week researching to find the least-smart set I could.

The best option is display only units made for businesses, like what they use for restaurant menus, but those are usually twice the price of normal tvs because they're not app subsidized like smart tvs are.

What I ended up going with was Hisense. They ship with Google TV, but it's disabled by default. On first power up, it asks if you want to activate the Google TV features, and you can just say no. The thing then runs like a basic display.

I have stopped using TV sets more than a decade ago.

Instead of a TV set, I use a very big monitor, which is connected to a mini-PC (an old Intel NUC with Linux), which also has a TV tuner and an infrared remote control receiver. Besides just showing a TV channel, a mini-PC can also record it and it can play any other kind of movie or music files, or it can stream some video from the Internet.

I have an older TCL TV that I've never connected to the internet. Of course, that doesn't prevent it from finding open wifi access points and exfiltrating data without my consent. Based on this (really marvelous) reporting from Gamers Nexus, I probably need to double-check what is actually happening.

BTW corporate meeting rooms with smart TVs...shouldn't have them.

Sceptre still makes some, Walmart carries many of their models.

Possibly use a projector instead?

I've been searching for one hour, and the only truly safe thing is an HTPC linked to an OS-free commercial display like these large VAs from ViewSonic: https://www.viewsonic.com/global/products/commercial-display... (goes from 45" to 100").

That would be lovely. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, nobody sells (for instance) high-quality 65"+ OLED non-"smart" TVs. "dumb TV" options are limited to older display technology.

"Just a good large monitor" costs a fortune.

If anyone could recommend any dumb TV with good panels in EU, you're more than welcome.

If you want a good panel, you're going to have to buy a smart TV.

Just don't ever let it connect to the internet.

> Buy a good "dumb" TV

Unfortunately, you can't have one without the other. The best, image quality -wise, TVs are all "smart".

... and that's the trick, isn't it. Have you ever tried going into an electrical store and buying a dumb TV any time recently?

Side note: I can't be sure, but I may have actually been the person who coined "Dumb TV" 12 years ago [0] - I've been unable to find an earlier usage.

[0] https://andybeaumont.com/post/dumb-tv/

I don't understand why the best advice in this thread is getting downvoted. Even if you buy a smart TV and then disable the smarts, you're still teaching the TV companies that smart TVs sell.

Remove the antenna.

EDIT: Just to be clear, the parent's post was originally made in relation to an article/thread called: "LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices". My response was written at the same time.

> So the video doesn't seem to support the claim in the article that "LG smart TVs continuously [...] log microphone audio while appearing to be turned off".

While it is a bit unclear as to whether the logging and transmitting of audio is happening[1], without hacking the device, they were also quite clear that they made it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to MITM certain encrypted communications on their consumer devices. Combining that with claims they make about advertising makes LG's actions highly suspect.

While the video is quite clear that they are not saying LG is doing this (for legal reasons), the set out to prove the capabilities are there and the privacy related configuration options are very weak. For example: the microphone switch only controls one of the onboard microphones. Even if it physically cut off all of the microphones, there are other vectors that could only be software controlled (such as voice enabled remote controls).

Either way, whether it is LG or a third party, the capability to log and transmit audio can certainly be exploited.

Perhaps it is time we start considering whether we should do something just because it can be done. That is to say: do we really need to control a television by voice, or have other features that require a microphone, just because adding a microphone is cheap and there is enough compute to process the data?

[1] I got the impression they were claiming that the audio was recorded and stored on device. They simply could not prove it was sent to LG.

I think this video is completely misleading about what LG does, versus what the TV is capable of doing. I tried watching this yesterday and was pretty offended by the lack of clarity and closed it.

No, you can't. They can just spoof their MAC address and be freed.

Technical solutions are insufficient for such disregard, the company needs to be sued out of existence, and laws made to prohibit and punish such behavior

Unfortunately, "AI" speech to text loggers can run a long time before it ever runs out of memory. Every time you have to update the TV software, a few MiB of your data is sent.

The issue is a lot of the TV traffic is encrypted, and given the other issues reported it likely gets a lot worse for privacy advocates. Air-gaps don't necessarily guarantee anything either. =3

Unfortunately, there are very few/no options in the market which don't spy on you. Let me know if you get one especially in the OLED space

I don't think you need any software updates for your TV. I have a LG oled which I haven't connected to Internet for the last 3 years. Just do a factory reset and don't connect TV to Internet. Everything works without software updates

No doubt the feature that would imply analytics doesn’t function until terms are accepted doesn’t work as intended. It’s not like it’s going to be a priority to test before going to production.

It'll be difficult. It's webos of which there's very little custom development.

You'd be better off with an android tv which you can poke at using adb and disable services. Maybe even root it. And install alternative software like smarttubenext.

Unfortunately there very few Android based TVs left. Phillips recently switched to Titanos, Samsung has tizen, Amazon has a new OS. I think it's just Sony that's left on android now.

The EU ones do reach out to endpoints, but mine is currently off and I am not testing that :)

They’d be like yeah no problem.

TV with smart features: $999. TV without smart features: $1,200

So I have a tv of LG from the same period. I keep it dumb, not connected to the internet and just use an apple TV, so far it's a clean option. And it's always a good idea to have piHole up to, they usually have the block list updated with LG's and Samsungs urls.

You can (hopefully) root your TV: https://e.nya.je/getroot/ and then follow a guide like this to disable all the snooping: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/lg-tv-block-mini-how-to/2551...

Disclaimer: I haven't tried any of this myself, I've just been looking into it as I am/was considering buying an LG TV.

PiHole doesn't block IPs. It blocks DNS. The device have at least three ways to bypass PiHole: use external DNS directly, or pin the phone-home servers' IP addresses, or use some other protocols to carry IP resolution.

I'd just open the TV and yank or desolder the mic out. Or use the TV as a dumb monitor -- don't connect it to WiFi or Ethernet. And use an external Kodi/AppleTV/whatever-rocks-your-viewing-boat

At this point, best to just keep it disconnected. Just use an apple tv or similar. They sold us a spying device masqueraded as a smart TV.

If internet is really required, I'd personally flood such an LG tv with fake data - add a raspberry pi to provide it with looped audio streams for the microphone, fake bluetooth devices, and so on. But it's still probably a drop in a bucket.

I bought Apple TV many years ago and haven’t plugged tv into internet since.

Vote for politicians that vocally campaign against advertising surveillance.

They are more creative than that.

Adguard only intercepts DNS, right? I would be worried that IP addresses to phone home are hardcoded. Doesn't seem like a resilient solution.

You can root your LG and install an app that allow remapping any button to do anything, including selecting specific HDMI input.

The problem is they really are the best TVs. I have one sitting next to me that thankfully hasn't been connected to the internet in 5 years. Take the subsidies they give you for being able to spy on you then don't let them spy on you is the better move.

Why don’t you just use it as a display and have a more reputable device (e.g a mini pc or an apple tv) feeding it? I’m not forced to give my tv network access at all, since it doesn’t do anything other than display whatever the apple box outputs…

"We value your privacy" → "Your private data is valuable" (I guess)

I really hope they do and slap them with the 4% of their total global annual turnover.

Somehow the EU only appears to target big wealthy service providers. I wonder why.

Kill it with fire.

Such a pity the name is associated with freeing proprietary software.

The _real_ samba: https://www.samba.org/

Can't watch football on a flock camera

Not a lawyer, but two-party consent states make it illegal to record conversations without both parties knowing.

dont know if that means if the tv has 2pt text disclosing the recording in the middle of a multi-language manual and agreeing to plug the tv into power counts as consent or if it even covers tv devices/usage

This seems quite hyperbolic to me.

Newspapers were leveraging sensationalism and attempting to capture attention by any means long long before targeted ads were a driver of revenue.

I'd guess there are plenty of pre-newspaper examples as well.

Most non-techie people I know have a smart TV without an external streaming box like an Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, Roku, etc.

Because it is a 'smart Tv', and it asks to get connected to the internet during setup?

That being said, I have an old LG Tv (pre-android, forget what they call the os), and I never connected it, opting instead to hook up a firetv stick .... (who knows what bad crap they might be up to btw).

But the point is, we are a minority, most people go the path of least resistance.

In my experience (I have a 2015 TV that's been EOL'ed by anyone doing apps for TVs) streaming services are increasingly not allowing chromecast, instead requiring you to log in on the TV.

I cancel those services... but I recognize that many people go the other way.

How do you know that not connecting it is sufficient to stop the spying?

There are a few large IoT-focused networks like Amazon Sidewalk where conceivably the smart TV could connect to them if you don't connect it to your home wifi. I believe many ISPs like Xfinity also runs shared public wifi from their routers - a tv could connect via your neighbor's ISP-provided router and you wouldn't have any idea.

Ever heard of netflix, youtube, disney+, paramount, hulu, etc?

1. Onboarding tells you to

2. Convenience

3. Cheaper than buying an Apple TV et al

A pretty silly thing to ask. I can control my LG OLED TV from the YouTube and YouTube Music apps on my phone, as well as other apps, but the way that works is the apps hand off the stream parameters to the TV, they don't actually proxy the stream to the TV, which would have all kinds of drawbacks. The TV also comes out of the box or within 1 click of having the apps of popular services like Prime Video, Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, HBO/Max, Peacock, etc etc all of them they're just lightweight javascript applications.

The average person's house has a gateway/router/wifi thing from their ISP, a smart tv connected to the internet with microphones, and one of those iptv piracy boxes that's actually the source of all the residential proxy ips.

Convenience over all else is what 99% of people are doing.

Because not everyone wants to buy a tv and a Roku or similar device.

why would i want to have a second box to play my content when i can have it all in one. HDMI cables can only be so long before they get in the way. connecting the TV to a fileserver via wifi is awfully convenient. i also want to play stuff from my phone or my laptop (which is to far away to connect via cable), not to forget that streaming services require internet too.

so yeah, i totally want a wireless TV screen that is able to connect with all the devices in my house. but it's kind of difficult to achieve that without letting the TV access the internet. (not all home routers do not support blocking internet access to specific devices, and most people would not know that's how to do it)

TVs have streaming services, those need internet to function.

What else does anyone (average consumer) use their TV for? I don’t want a separate device to plug in and remote just to stream things.

All TVs offer extra functionality like connecting to Netflix, Disney+, HBO etc. It obviates the need for an extra device like Roku or Apple TV.

> Why would anyone technical ever connect a TV to the internet in the first place?

You must be...

> I must be fundamentally disconnected from how consumers think about technology.'

Right.