Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG’s TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that “Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work.”
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” and that wake-word detection is all processed locally. However, the word “continuously” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations long after one would assume its AI assistant had stopped listening.
(paraphrasing, but)
From just the BSSID these TVs are collecting they know your precise fucking location and can pinpoint it based on signal strength to the nearest street. WiFi Positioning System is cursed. Amazingly, BSSID can also tell you who the customer is based on “public” records since ISPs keep track of this kind of thing when they hand out free routers.
If they were actually wrong about anything, LG would be suing the pants off them right now.
Instead LG are “debunking” claims that weren’t actually made.
Not addressing the other areas amounts to confirmation
“Misleading” can be such a telling wiggle word.
Heres the thing. Its exceptionally easy to see where packets are going on most routers. IP to IP or otherwise.
So yeah, things are going out when you plug in an LG tv. So dont buy it.
I have two of them…but I only use them for streaming from my plex server so they’re completely isolated from the internet. As far as I’m concerned I’m happy if it never connects to the internet.
But no, next TV will most definitely not be an LG… Though I’m not sure what the options are, all TV’s are smart TV’s these days… Fuck it, maybe I’ll just find a 65" dumb monitor and put it on the wall.
“We investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong.” -LG
Nuh-uh! -LG
Lies Good™
There is also a response to that response up on Gamers Nexus and its something along the lines of: 🖕 + going through the legal agreements detailing what they (may) do with your data + more 🖕
