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.