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YouTuber claims LG TVs spy on users even when turned off

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LG TV

Is your LG TV eavesdropping on you? 

That's the bold claim made by the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus.

A new video from Gamers Nexus details how LG televisions are constantly logging data from users and uploading it back to the company. And Gamers Nexus claims LG TVs are doing this even when they are in standby mode or completely disconnected from the internet.

Gamers Nexus says it's able to do this due to the "advertising functionality" built into the devices.

Gamers Nexus video shows how software vulnerabilities allowed them to listen to and record audio from the on-device microphones on the TV, and claims these flaws could be "exploited to convert the TVs into covert listening devices." The channel said these security vulnerabilities are being reported through the necessary channels.

In addition, the LG TVs Gamers Nexus tested also scan users' WiFi to find nearby devices connected to the local network.

Gamers Nexus says that a majority of the issues it uncovered are related to LG's Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology, which utilizes these eavesdropping capabilities to find out what a user is watching, what app they are using, and what devices connect to the TV.

"We know who is in the LG household," an LG representative said in a corporate video, which Gamers Nexus included in their investigation. "We know which devices are there."

"We own the glass," says another LG Ad Solutions representative in another corporate video, boasting about the company's access to its customers.

As Gamers Nexus points out, LG's advertising platform, LG Ad Solutions, claims on its website that the company can detect 363 million "U.S. addressable secondary devices" even though LG claims it has only sold 216 million LG TVs globally.

According to Gamers Nexus, LG TVs also collect a user's IP address, geographic location, the names of every local WiFi network, and the IP addresses of other devices on the network.

The Gamers Nexus video was created in partnership with YouTube channel Level1Techs and cybersecurity researchers known as MrBruh and uturn. It has already amassed more than 2 million views over the weekend.

As The Verge points out, this isn't Gamers Nexus' first time calling out LG for its practices. Earlier this summer, a report by the YouTube channel found that LG was serving its customers with unwanted and intrusive ads on its TV screens and PC monitors. After the video was published and subsequent reports from other outlets came out, Microsoft eventually intervened to address the issue with LG, as Mashable reported at the time. 



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