Personally, I wouldn’t connect a new TV to the internet. And we’re still using old technology that doesn’t have microphones including our old Roku box. And my Pi-Hole DNS servers filter telemetry sites, but I’d bet they hardcode IPs these days. If I had to buy a new modern TV, I’d probably be tempted to desolder the microphone if I’m connecting the device to the internet. And the interesting bit from the video is they are encrypting the data sent home, so you don’t know what they’re sending. And scanning WiFi hotspots around you along with recording audio is nuts. One thing is for sure, these megacorps just don’t respect their customers.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/991190/lg-tv-spying-standby-recording-wi-fi-scanning-gamers-nexus
Gamers Nexus gives you another reason to never connect your smart TV to the internet.
By Dominic Preston
LG smart TVs are almost constantly logging and uploading data about owners and their homes, even when offline or on standby mode, according to a new report from YouTube channel Gamers Nexus. The company’s TV sets scan Wi-Fi networks for nearby devices, record audio logs through their microphones, and use audio and video sampling to recognize exactly what you’re watching from across the TV inputs.
Gamers Nexus partnered with fellow YouTubers Level1Techs and independent security researchers for the investigation, which involved testing retail LG OLEDs. Packet captures showed the TVs scanning the local area network for nearby hardware like phones or smartwatches, as well as logging location data and details of nearby Wi-Fi networks, and feeding the information back to LG Ad Solutions. Perhaps more concerningly, the TVs were capable of recording microphone audio when in standby; this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet, with audio files stored offline and uploaded once a connection was restored.
The final piece of the puzzle is Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), tech that uses audio and video data to figure out what you’re actually watching, examining the apps you use through the TV’s own smart interface and the content you connect via HDMI and other ports. ACR isn’t just an LG issue though: A new video from RTINGS digs into how ACR is used by almost every smart TV manufacturer to figure out what you watch.
This isn’t LG’s first brush with Gamers Nexus. In July this year, the channel flagged that some LG monitors were automatically installing an app that collected device data and ran pop-up ads for LG’s other apps and even McAfee antivirus. The public pressure from that video prompted an intervention from Microsoft, and ultimately led to LG disabling the pop-up ads.