LG Smart TV: is your television spying on you without your knowledge?

In collaboration with the Level1Techs channel and independent security researchers, the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus made troubling discoveries about the tracking capabilities of Smart TVs, and more specifically about LG models, including the very expensive Oled G5 range. While Gamers Nexus focused on the Korean manufacturer, it should be noted that most major consumer electronics brands have also been using these processes (such as content recognition) for years in order to gather as much information as possible about the user to better target advertising messages. However, the recent revelations by researchers go much further.

 

A constant scan of the network and your habits The investigation reveals that LG televisions silently scan your home network to detect other connected devices, whether phones, computers, printers, or home automation devices. By cross-referencing this information with data from the ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) system, which continuously captures infos about what you are watching on the screen, including through your [abc]HDMI[/abc] sources such as an Apple TV, the brand obtains a remarkably precise picture of your household’s equipment and habits. This information would feed LG Ad Solutions, the group’s advertising arm, which claims it can target more than 360 million devices thanks to these methods.

 

Recorded conversations even offline The investigation specifies that ambient conversations are captured by the microphones, even when the television appears to be off and is in simple Standby mode. More worrying still, if the television is not connected to the internet, the audio is nevertheless recorded and stored locally. As soon as the network connection is restored, the pending data is directly sent to the servers. The team also highlighted security vulnerabilities within the webOS operating system allowing remote code execution (RCE). These flaws could give potential hackers direct access to the microphones and to your home network.

 

LG’s formal denial This finding raises obvious privacy questions, to which LG quickly responded. In a statement, the brand says that the video’s conclusions are incorrect. The manufacturer guarantees that its televisions only process and record voices when a wake command (such as “Hi LG”) is spoken, or when the microphone button on the remote control is held down. LG adds that scanning nearby devices is a standard market feature to ensure home interoperability, and that the ACR recognition tool remains an optional feature, subject to the user’s explicit consent.

 

While waiting for security patches related to webOS, researchers advise privacy-conscious users to decline advertising targeting options (ACR), or to physically isolate their Smart TV by connecting it to a guest Wi-Fi network. Now, again, if LG is highlighted by the Gamers Nexus channel, the situation is very similar with other television brands. The advice given therefore also applies to broadcasters other than those from LG.