LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices

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!

I know its important to put things down to coincidence whenever possible, but a very expensive Bang OLufsen ( I think they use LG ) TV would turn itself off at "the" most interesting split second moments during gameplay , to the point where I thought "if I am being pranked by a friend, does this TV even stream its contents?".

Much to my surprise I found out that many modern TVs do in fact come with dev mode that allow some sort of screen capture.

Safe to say I turned off all the "allow metrics and market/dev modes" and have been happier since.

EDIT> Incase anyone was wondering I did some more research about my model ( im NOT a TV guy ) and came across this regarding what screen content could technically be passed remotely: "Most probable raw grab: ThinQ/SSAP on the LAN after pairing — ~960×540 JPEG. Live Plus/ACR: most probably sends a fingerprint, not a retrievable raw frame." No idea what it means but thought it might be relevant. Remember Im saying in my case it was a coincidence.

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.

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.

That's an easy one to put a compensation figure on but there's probably all sorts of other exploits waiting to happen.

I think the most egregious thing here is that if you don't give the TV a network connection that it will actively search for other ways to get the data back to LG such as open WIFI.

I'm practically certain that there was no ill-intent by LG when conceiving this feature. It was most likely just a convenience thing.

But I am also practically certain, that, eventually, any pile of data will attract ideas you do not want attracted.

Ongoing discussions:

"216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49592375

"LG TVs aren't the only ones spying on you [video]" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49575176

All devices in my home sit behind adguard. The TV can try all it wants.

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.

Makes me glad I bought a Sony TV which has the microphone on the remote - and is compatible with older remotes without a microphone, so the new remote with its microphone and sponsored streaming service buttons gathers dust (without batteries inserted) while I use an old remote.

This is the same behaviour as the german secret police in east germany. The difference now its for ads and by tech. All collected data are probably ai transcribed from audio to text and is fused via data fusion to serve ads. Add collaborative filtering to find similar interests between users.

When the first TV ships with a battery to keep running while unplugged, I'm dusting off my soldering iron and my digital circuits handbook.

This sort of blanket data collection needs to be made illegal in every single jurisdiction, and have _very_ robust penalties for anyone found in breach of them.

I could buy a tv in late 2014 and happened to be the last batch of bravia tvs pre android tv. Back then I was kind of bummed out that just a few weeks after that they announced the first tvs with android tv and now i was hooked with a smart-but-not-that-smart tv with a bunch of crappy ads, an unusable web browser and a non-customizable os.

But they stopped updating it years ago, none of its apps work anymore and the only "smart" feature that still works is screen mirroring feature. The tv part itself still works great. Not a 4k oled 120Hz shiny impressive thing but the image quality is still great. What I thought was an unlucky adquisition back then turned out to be a pretty good one.

I absolutely loathe my LG smart TV. Just switching to another input requires 3 button press.

I hope someone uses their free time to hack the OS and offer a clean and simple interface to make it a “dumb” TV.

Is all of them, every "smart tv" does it, even after adb, permission restricting or rooting. Insert a (non infected) usb lamp in your tv and see the lamp turning on when your tv is off. It notifies you about the background activation activity :) Interesting to see when exactly get active (is it keywords or nearby devices or scheduled processes)? Can´t be keywords as that would mean 24/7 active and the lamp says otherwise.

I have a rooted LG C4. Beyond blocking things at the DNS level, not accepting terms, not using AI, I wonder if there’s some existing software solution or a documented step-by-step to remove this bloatware/spyware.

Wait, do LG Webos TVs have microphones in the TV and/or in the remote? I am aware of the latter only.

This is automatic liability in California and the EU, correct? Does Illinois consider one’s voice pattern to be a biometric? If so, there, too.

I will remind everyone again that weev was raided by the FBI, arrested, and had all electronics seized, before getting a chance to defend himself in court, all for the crime of publishing emails he found on unsecured URLs he was able to guess.

But we're allowing 1000x worse things, because what, there's a vague line about it buried deep in some EULA, which means laws no longer apply?

Lets treat them the same. Raid LG, seize all of their electronics, at least in the US (other countries are encouraged to do their own raids), arrest the executives, and after they're all in jail, and digital forensics are poring over their products and servers to find what else they did, they can argue in court how actually all these crimes are legal.

It's only fair.

They just won't stop, will they?

Just don't buy a smart TV. Buy a good "dumb" TV (or just get a good large monitor), then hook it up to a set top box (with TV capabilities as needed).

the only TV I have connected to the home network (guilty, I admit), Sony OLED 65, ARP floods my network about 12-15 hours after "turning off". On a plus side, it doesn't appear to be streaming anything out: no local DNS hits, not enough outgoing traffic for any meaningful audio stream

The choice between privacy concerns and ineptly coded network stack is tough. But that's the choice we're forced to have

Almost 13 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759426

As an owner of a (2020?) LG WebOS TV, to what degree can I fight this? Any point in trying Pihole with targeted blocking of certain IPs?

I mean, I’m not disagreeing, but it’s a bit rich for a site that logs data to 1,745 “partners” to be complaining too much.

notebookcheck.net:

> We value your privacy

Shares my browsing info with 1745 "partners" with no clear way to opt out (which ought to be opt-in by the way to be compliant with ePrivacy and GDPR).

Oh Simon? Simon? Wherefore art thou Simon?

I thought every microphone controversy was an Unproven Conspiracy Theory™...

(https://simonwillison.net/tags/microphone-ads-conspiracy)

Clearly the penalties for this are not high enough, because the scumbags keep doing it.

Vizio TVs were caught taking screen grabs and phoning those home years ago.

GDPR compliance lawsuitssss in 3...

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