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.
TL;DW: LG is using very weasely wording to misrepresent what they’re doing, and GN calls their bluff (with data and receipts)
The response: “we hear you!”
I personally have no misconceptions about the intrusive data collecting, aggregating, identifying and reselling that LG is doing with their residential customers via their televisions, nor about the entitled way LG and its corporate representatives and officers have spoken about their right to gather it.
“We own the glass,” they repeat, as though that means they also own whatever is spoken beyond the glass in the same house. In reality, they own neither.
Nor am I misled by LG’s weasel words that address problems not ever specifically raised, while completely swerving around actual problems publicly demonstrated with their products.
But I will say they are laboring under a serious misconception if they think I will ever buy one from them. They can fuck ALL the way off with that shit.
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,”
But with a 100 trigger words?
They stop recording for 12 minutes a day.
After the recent controversies, I added a bunch of blockers for LG trackers to my pi-hole, to stop my 8 year old TV from collecting data. It blocked a lot at first, but then suddenly nothing, I investigated a bit and saw that it had started sending only to their Vietnamese servers, which were missing from my blocklist.
Make sure you block all regions!
I looked up the domains registered by logitech electronics and logitech corp.
Blocked the hell out of those.In case anyone is interested: https://github.com/Appoxo/Ad-Spam-Blocklist/blob/master/hosts.txt
Forgive me for using GitHub
Are Logitech involved in this too?
Not sure what Logitech has to do with it?
But sure, block their spyware too (logi+ options)I looked up the domains registered by logitech electronics and logitech corp.
Blocked the hell out of those.Sorry, you brought them up.
It might help a few people if you shared the domains you blocked.
(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.
Lies Good™
Not addressing the other areas amounts to confirmation
“Misleading” can be such a telling wiggle word.
“We investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong.” -LG
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.
Here’s the fun part. It doesn’t matter. If it finds any open Wi-Fi then it will connect and upload. And it’s constantly looking
Apparently the TV searches for anything to connect to still send the data.
I probably have to look at corporate monitors because those should include no bloatware (or spyware) because they arent subsidized by ads (hopefully)
From looking around out of curiosity when this stuff about LG TVs came out, Samsung sells explicitly Non-Smart 65" Hospitality Displays, but they cost $1030 (US), which is over twice as much as their consumer TV with the same specs.
Also somebody pointed out Spectre TVs (which seem to only be sold in the US, and I couldn’t really find an European equivalent, the closest being a Spanish brand whose largest non-smart TV is only 40").
I couldn’t actually find any large dumb monitor except for the ultra-wide curved ones, but I only looked around for half a hour or so.
Personally, the way I already use my TV (wired to a Mini-PC running Linux and Kodi, which has Series and Movies as video files as well as using free IPTV for live TV, and I even have a wireless remote for it so it’s used just like you would a traditional media player or Smart TV) is already perfect for a dumb monitor.
(A more straightforward way to get a privacy respecting setup like this would be to install LibreELEC on something like a Pi or a Mini-PC and get the same kind of wireless remote as I have - my setup is only as it is because I didn’t know about LibreELEC back when I put it together plus it also works as a home server as well as my home NAS, since an N100 Mini-PC is very overpowered to just work as a Media Player).
It really seems that the only way to keep at least some privacy is to ditch corporate devices altogether and just put together your own media player box (which, as I wrote above, is pretty straightforward with something like LibreELEC).
They cost more because the cheaper tvs are subsidised by flogging your data
but they cost $1030 (US), which is over twice as much as their consumer TV with the same specs.
Subsidized by ads, makes it cheaper. Personally I am willing to pay it (to some degree)
I couldn’t actually find any large dumb monitor except for the ultra-wide curved ones, but I only looked around for half a hour or so.
Chromecasts are not able to cope with anything other than 16:9. :(
(A more straightforward way to get a privacy respecting setup like this would be to install LibreELEC on something like a Pi or a Mini-PC and get the same kind of wireless remote as I have - my setup is only as it is because I didn’t know about LibreELEC back when I put it together plus it also works as a home server as well as my home NAS, since an N100 Mini-PC is very overpowered to just work as a Media Player).
What does it matter if TVs like LG do ACR on HDMI content?
For actual peivacy it requires at the very least a display with nothing other than hardware to decode a video signal.Oh yeah, you want dumb everything else beyond the little box that you control which has the “smarts” and something like Linux and Kodi on it.
Even having Windows on that box would pretty much guarantee you have no privacy.
As it so happens, in my experience of over a decade using Media Players to play videos on my TV (since well before Android TV and Smart TVs) it’s even the most economic option: the life-cycle of the hardware that plays videos is a lot tighter than the life-cycle of the actual display - unless you’re running after the bleeding edge, you more often have to replace the video playing hardware because it doesn’t support newer video codecs than then display - so it’s cheaper to have those things be separate so that you don’t have to replaced the whole thing every few years just because the cheaper part - the processor - can’t decode newer codecs and instead can just replace the “smarts” and not spend any money on the stuff that still works fine (and is actually more expensive).
Further, if one does like I do and actually use that box for more things (my Media Player Mini-PC is also a home server and home NAS), that’s yet another way that such a setup ends up being cheaper because it’s being used to do the work of 2 or 3 things.
I suspect even if one pays twice as much for a non-smart “Hospitality Display” to have alongside your own self-made Media Player box, it’ll still end up cheaper because in 5-10 years’ time that display will still be just fine even while that box might need upgrading due to new video codecs.
But they also do not care about picture quality beyond brightness, if at all.
My next one will probably be a Sony
Still hard to see what is actually sent since it’s all over encrypted channels. To some extent you can look at the amount of data that is being sent and infer from that what might be actually transmitted. Say if the amount of data seems to match what is expected of uploading voice recordings.
…okay? So the conclusion is don’t buy anything that communicates over the internet?
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 🖕
Nuh-uh! -LG
