this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
481 points (99.8% liked)

Technology

87879 readers
3189 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
481
LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices (www.notebookcheck.net)
submitted 6 hours ago by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world
126 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

An investigation by Gamers Nexus found LG smart TVs sweep local networks to map phones and nearby devices. Tests also showed the sets can capture microphone audio with the screen off — they then upload data once reconnected to the internet.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Lippy@fedia.io 16 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Stuff like this is why I'm still holding on to my old TV for dear life. It's seen better days but it's at least easily repairable.

The amp went bad which causes the internal speakers to give up after a couple of minutes, so I just run it with a soundbar. Then one of the cats broke the optical port for it, so now it's taped on lol. The panel still works great, so I think I'll just replace the main board on it to keep it going for a few more years.

Once something on it finally goes where repairing it becomes unviable, then I've no idea where to go from there. I guess I'll just keep buying used TVs and fix them up.

[–] upandatom@lemmy.world 11 points 1 hour ago (4 children)

As people say in these threads everytime, just don't give your tv Internet access.

Seems smart to avoid LG as well.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 8 points 57 minutes ago (1 children)

It's still listening and recording. The recent Gamers Nexus video shows that the just store everything locally until they find a way to send it. They're always scanning the radio for other access points too.

[–] TeddE@lemmy.world 2 points 30 minutes ago

My Visio TV developed a thing where the OSD menus freeze up and the controls unresponsive frequently - it's not connected to WiFi. Its my opinion that some internal drive is filled up with my watch data that a factory reset cannot fix, and I suspect the lack of disk space is why it's freezing. I can't* prove this, but I suspect it to be.

*I might possibly have the skills to, but my time is devoted to other tasks, and I don't want to deprive my household of the living room TV just because I want to tear it apart.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

go one step further and open it up and unplug the wifi antennas, just to curtail it even further.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] titanicx@lemmy.zip 1 points 40 minutes ago

You know you can use a new to without connecting it to the internet.

[–] matallic@lemmy.world 5 points 46 minutes ago (1 children)

This is why I always block devices that have no business being on the internet at MAC level.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 minutes ago

You'll also have to make sure to properly destroy it afterwards. If you re-sell it, the next owner might connect it to the internet and all the stored data will get uploaded.

Also there's tech like Amazon Sidewalk that allows devices to talk to other devices nearby in a mesh, bypassing your router entirely.

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 16 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

There's a lot of misinformation in the comments here.

  1. LG have been caught using the Internet connection of connected devices (like windows computers) to snoop on your network.
  2. Because of that, it has access to your network even if you remove the wifi module or do not connect the TV directly to your network.
  3. Lobotomizing the TV will not necessarily fix this issue, but I still think it's a good start. It may be beneficial to switch to a different operating system or just ban the TV from accessing certain parts of the Eco system on your computer.
  4. Removing Bluetooth, wifi, and microphone modules will be beneficial in the long run because this will not be the last time a company tries this and it's not limited to LG. If you are technically inclined or can follow a YouTube video, go for it.
[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 2 points 9 minutes ago* (last edited 7 minutes ago)

This all happens the moment you plug that HDMI (or DisplayPort for people who purchased an LG computer monitor) right into an internet-enabled laptop through a protocol called EDID, also known as "Extended Display Identification Data," which by itself is totally harmless!

It simply tells your operating system what kind of monitor is connected, what its capabilities are, it's serial number. That's it!

Inside Windows, when you go to Device Manager, it might not seem like much. Just a generic PnP device attached as a monitor.

Dive a little more into Device Manager, and we see where EDID does its magic; we found that this particular Microsoft Box is hooked up to some kind of Samsung monitor. Now, Samsung might have some kind of driver that would help take advantage of my monitor. But this Samsung is so old they simply do not care.

Yeah, it's installing drivers on WINDOWS.

So, caveat two is don't connect these things to an internet-connected WINDOWS machine.

Good point.

But, as others have said, if you do successfully air gap one of these things, it might stop working because a hard drive is full, or more directly because it can't phone home and is designed to lock you out in that case.

[–] thehatfox@lemmy.world 8 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

LG have been caught using the Internet connection of connected devices (like windows computers) to snoop on your network.

Do you have any sources for that? Not doubting it just curious about how that works.

[–] A_norny_mousse@piefed.zip 44 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (3 children)

Waiting for the "No idea how this happened, we're sorry and promise to make this better in future versions" moment - instead of admitting that this is just their business model.

Hoping for prosecution from the EU and at least one other country.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] graycube@lemmy.world 51 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

My LG TV runs WebOS, which is a linux distro. I have been wondering how hard it is to root and replace with a distro of my own choosing. I had thought because my TV is pretty old that I was safe from the more sophisticated spying, but last week it interrupted what I was watching and would not let me continue using it without agreeing to new terms of use. This revived my interest in rooting it.

[–] doogstar@lemmy.100010101.xyz 8 points 1 hour ago

https://cani.rootmy.tv/ - I just recently bought an LG for the first time, with eyes wide open, and used this site to get root on it, as well as VLANing it with a strict block list, but also an allow list only based policy, and strict no external DNS requests policies.

Also worth knowing that when accepting their policies many of them are optional and are just data slurping consent , think it was the top 2 compulsory in my region out of about 5.

[–] RunJun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

I saw this linked the other day. I haven’t looked into it deeply or done it.

[–] droans@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago

I rooted my C1 years ago. I spent weeks afterwards worried that I just destroyed the warranty of a $1,500 TV.

But today, I've never felt so justified.

[–] thehatfox@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

I didn't know LG webOS rooting was a thing, that's interesting to know.

There is an open source version of webOS, although I don't know how it compares to the stock LG version. Maybe there will eventually be something like a LineageOS equivalent.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Go look up "tivoization". GPLv2 isn't enough to protect you from this shit.

[–] kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (4 children)

And that's why I have a VLAN without outbound connections allowed. Still allows me to cast to the device from a separate vlan but the TV has no internet at all.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›