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

[MyDataUnion]

Unless something changes, in 10 years, those license agreements that we have to accept will take 10 hours or more to read (some of them already take more than an hour). I recently signed up with a website that had 10 agreements that overall took more than an hour to read. One click accepts them all.

You just hit at the heart of what I'm tackling head on. I also read the agreements, as well as look under the hood of our apps, and it's a disgrace how poorly we are treated when we aren't at the negotiating table. No business would ever accept these terms and nor allow spyware on their devices.

I'm sick of this crap. I have ideas on how to change the dynamic and am building a negotiating bloc of people who want the same. My company is called My Data Union, PBC. Reach out if you're interested.

[Noty]

This is why I don't plug an ethernet cable into my TVs or connect them to wifi.

I just connect an Apple TV to the HDMI and use that.

No tracking to worry about.

Apple TV still tracks/spies on you.

[Hg]

How many other tvs & phones & computers do this? This is crap! All this snooping for advertising purposes... Do we have ANY privacy left???

[Gino188]

This is a known feature that is not hidden which is not automatically turned on by default.

You must set your TV to a different standby mode and enable LG voice control.

When you do this, it very plainly tells you that it can listen with the screen off so you can control the TV with voice.

Failure of User Awareness, not some nefarious spyware.

Yea. I remember when I got my LG C2 and I read it was doing Automatic Content Recognition and and recording the voice. I kept saying No when the popup comes, but it came up multiple times each day. Then I instead turned off a setting and did not connect it to the internet. But now it asks me everyday to connect it to the internet,in the middle of me using the tv, not at startup. It is super annoying.

[nraendowment]

I own an LG OLED55C4PUA. The first thing I did upon installation was turn off (or so I thought) audio monitoring with the physical switch under the TV. Is this thing still listening to us?

[PaulAt]

I assume the listening is for voice activation or Alexa integration. The local network phone mapping is to find phones that can be used as remotes. This story was just waiting for someone to write, but I doubt there's anything here.

This is a known feature that is not hidden which is not automatically turned on by default.

Two clowns making pro-LG "assumptions" without bothering to watch the investigation video. I wonder if they're on the payroll, or doing this for free.

Your LG tv is constantly recording audio and storing it. The voice command window is ~15 seconds of silence before it shuts off silently, so in an environment with ambient conversation (office, board room, etc) that's never. Remote code execution is trivial and does not require physical access, just being on the same network. Whether it's LG's advertising division or another hostile actor, if you have this demonic device anywhere near you, you are pwned.

Re "actually you agreed to let these criminals rob you in the fine print", these TVs have about 4 hours of T&Cs you're "required" to read before use (they actually added this up with avg human reading speed) so spare me.

It's deeply embarassing for LG that they'd send agents into threads like this to shill their evil line.

[PaulAt]

I own an LG OLED55C4PUA. The first thing I did upon installation was turn off (or so I thought) audio monitoring with the physical switch under the TV. Is this thing still listening to us?

Yes it is, they cover this in the video. The tv has multiple mics and the rest of them are still on, listening, and logging. Further, it's trivial for an attacker to turn the main mic back on via terminal regardless of the hardware switch situation.

[bone61]

How is this even legal?

[Deairpilot]

No Class action lawsuits, ever. The attorneys are the only ones making any money.
We have no privacy. We are being watched, tracked, logged and spied on from every direction.

[immediate-nothing]

Ok, i never post and comment and just created this account. if bluetooth and wifi aren't disabled through a physical on off switch, then I am not sure using a vlan and adblock does anything to prevent what the goal is. it's likely the majority of our devices are doing this and have been for some time. think the goal is to spatially map these electronic items and a physical switch is needed because if it's an digital switch then people can't be sure anything is 100% disabled and just not on ultra low power mode where scanning may still occur.

Yeah, kind of obvious but good that they make the masses aware and public shame them.

Personally I never connected mine, I use an Android tv box that is segregated on a "garbage iot" vlan that can't see my other devices, behind adguard that blocks some of what it tries to phone home. Not perfect but lesser evil.