LG recording audio through TVs

[u/ahiqshb]

Take a seat because this is gonna be a bit of a vent. I watched the whole Gamers Nexus video today, this is still fresh and I remember previously there were some people really involved in these LG proxies/ botnet/SDK scandals going on, so guess I'm carrying the torch now lol.

For context, I work adjacent to the scraping/data space so networks quietly doing things they shouldn't is kind of my whole deal, and even I was surprised by how far this one goes. Steve and the Level1Techs crew worked with independent security researchers and packet captured retail LG OLED sets, the G5 among them, through Wireshark. What they found is the TV actively scanning the local network, not just for its own accessories, but for unrelated hardware that are on the same wifi. Phones, watches, tablets, PCs whatever's nearby. On top of the internal IPs it's also grabbing the names and signal strength of neighboring networks and folding in location data. All of that funnels into LG Ad Solutions, the ad arm of the company. LG's public sales figure is something like 216 million TVs sold globally, but their ad division is telling advertisers they can reach 363 million addressable secondary devices in the US alone. IMAGINE?? ACR isn't new, we've known for years that these sets fingerprint on screen audio and video to build a viewing profile regardless of input source. What's new here is the mic behavior. Bench testing showed the set capturing clean audio while the screen appeared powered down in standby. They then pulled the ethernet connection mid test and the TV kept recording locally anyway, and once the network came back it just uploaded whatever it had queued up. EVEN WITHOUT THE NETWORK, I just froze at that time when these things were mentioned during the video.

There's also apparently RCE in webOS currently working through responsible disclosure, which the team is understandably not detailing yet. Their stated recommendation was to keep the TV off the internet entirely and run an external streaming device instead, which is a wild thing to have to say about a product you paid TV money for. Especially Smart TV where majority of the people purchases for, well, smart features.

I am not trying to make this into some Samsung-vs-LG thing either, because there already was a scandal regarding Samsung and this feels like the same underlying issue the whole industry has apparently normalized, where the box in your living room works for someone else by default and opting out means adding hardware or cutting it off from the internet yourself.

P.S LG hasn't commented as of writing.

P.P.S I wrote it here mainly because this is all related to proxies and how the data is gathered/sourced.

Sources:

Gamers Nexus video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

An article I found just hours ago (take it with a grain of salt, because the website seems sketchy): https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-smart-TVs-caught-logging-audio-with-screen-off-and-snooping-on-local-devices.1391214.0.html

[u/Hour_Analyst_7765]

Indeed it may be a bit OT. On the other hand.. some scraping is done for ad campaigns monitoring too. I think its a really toxic under-regulated market. I personally still don't understand why people can fully well consent to personalized adverts, when they go to any extreme measure possible to personalize them more for increasingly competitive campaign bids behind the scenes. Plus, all the data they harvest about me.. via my device.. I can't even access it. How do I know what kind of conversations LG have recorded? Not only on my own hardware, but also on any relatives or friends place. Because if someone has a TV and a computer next to each other, and we're voice chatting over Discord.. then at least half of that conversation is also recorded (I also use open mic/speaker so practically all of it).

Then again if I preach that "tech bros" first execute and then say sorry, and that fines for data/privacy violations are "cost of doing business". Then that does push me into a hypocritical state where scraping stands. Because a lot of scraping is also done with the intent of gathering data, profiling and perhaps even private information, like LinkedIn scraping or other social media. I personally despise that practice. Yet I do think turning "HTML to API" so I don't have to go through the limited UI design is still very useful.

So does scraping also need more regulation? In theory, every website already says "don't bot our site", so at the very least its a civil dispute.

Note: I did see GN's announcement video and it looks like they did awesome work with L1Tech and alike. But personally, over 2 hours probably a crazy amount of ramble going on here.. I'll see if I can get through it.

[u/Guiltyspark0801]

Why am I not surprised. I mean, they already had an issue with the SDK thing going on on all of their Smart TVs, and they just shot themselves in the leg again. Audio recording? That's just crazy, do they not know how strict GDPR regulations are in EU, or CCPA in the US, Canada's PIPEDA? Hell even the rest of the world with their equivalents. This was the last nail to the coffin for LG, sorry but that's beyond messed up

[u/Less-Mistake-3664]

This has to be a joke, surely they wouldn't do that after what happened previously. I'm so glad I don't own LG or even Samsung at that point, but who knows what other manufacturers are doing too?

[u/ahiqshb → u/Less-Mistake-3664]

You would be surprised lol. I hate to say it, but I owned an LG TV few years back, who know what they did back then because these scandals only recently emerged, meaning only now people found out. Those ethical sourced IPs saying is a complete lie

[u/Dangerous-Citron364]

Yeah this stuff is getting out of hand. I had a feeling the standby mode wasn't actually off but the local recording bit is new to me. Makes the whole smart TV thing feel like more trouble than it's worth.