The LG Smart TVs we’ve tested have first-party ACR (automatic content recognition) functionality that can pry into your personal life with greater precision than you might realize, with LG Ad Solutions’ executives and leadership saying, on camera, that LG “owns the glass.” Not you – even though you bought it – but them. They also talk about knowing everybody in the household, knowing the secondary devices, moving from TVs to smartphones and other screens, and more in their B2B discussions. Beyond just the fact that we think the TV’s native behavior parallels malware, the LG Smart TVs we tested also have a number of security vulnerabilities that can be exploited to convert the TVs into covert listening devices. In this investigation, we dive into the mix of LG’s first-party functionality that (in our opinions) is tantamount to spying and LG’s vulnerabilities and exploits that they have failed to protect against.
Never let it connect to internet.
This is a temporary solution though. One day they’ll just include cellular connectivity into their TVs once it gets cheap enough to do so. And this is terrifying because by then there will be no escape from their surveillance short of hacking into it or putting it in a faraday cage.
As someone who works in this space, it’s got a way to go as the data costs globally for this kind of plan are still bonkers.