The market has long known that LG smart TVs track what consumers watch while the set is on, then package that viewing data for sale to third party bidders without users knowing.

Now an extensive testing programme has found the South Korean company’s televisions keep logging information about owners and their homes even when the screen is dark, the set is on standby, or the TV has been disconnected from the internet altogether.

ChannelNews and SmartHouse have been raising these issues in Australia for some time.

The findings come from a major investigation by US hardware channel Gamers Nexus, which worked with fellow YouTube channel Level1Techs and three independent security researchers.

The team says it spent more than 500 hours and around US$70,000 analysing retail LG OLED sets, including a 2025 LG G5, using packet captures, decrypted and decompiled firmware, rooted test units and system log inspection.

Gamers Nexus titled the video “216,000,000 Spy TVs”, a reference to LG’s global smart TV installed base.

Your TV Is Mapping Your House

Packet captures showed the test televisions repeatedly scanning the local area network for hardware that had nothing to do with the TV’s operation.

In one test, a single set identified 38 separate devices, among them staff smartphones that had never been connected to the television, smartwatches, a 3D printer, an air purifier, thermostats and a development board.

Other tests logged network switches, printers, PCs, servers and HVAC equipment.

The data collected included device names, MAC addresses, internal IP addresses and signal strength.

The sets also catalogued surrounding Wi-Fi networks beyond the owner’s own, capturing network names, signal strength and channel information. Researchers noted that information about neighbouring Wi-Fi networks can be used to determine a device’s physical location.

Much of this discovery activity was built into the product rather than the result of a security flaw, according to the investigation.

Audio Captured In Standby

More seriously, the team reported capturing microphone audio while the screen appeared to be off. In one test the behaviour continued after the television was disconnected from the internet, with audio stored locally and uploaded once a connection was restored.

Gamers Nexus said disabling the primary microphone in settings may not disable a second microphone, that voice commands were transcribed to plain text and retained in device logs, and that the microphone remained active for 10 to 15 seconds after speech ended.

Some of the more dramatic audio demonstrations involved a television the researchers had already compromised, so the accurate reading is that the testing established a capability and a security exposure rather than proving every LG set is recording household conversations at all times.

Separately, the researchers identified remote code execution vulnerabilities which they say LG has not fully patched. LG has asked that technical details be withheld while responsible disclosure continues.

The ACR Business

The commercial engine behind all of this is Automatic Content Recognition, the technology that samples audio and video to identify precisely what is on screen, whether it arrives via a streaming app inside webOS or through an HDMI input from an external box.

Gamers Nexus found ACR remained active in some configurations even when the television was being used purely as an HDMI display. It estimated a single set exchanged roughly 4GB of ACR related traffic per month, and that LG Channels activity generated requests capable of revealing which channel was being watched.

LG’s advertising arm, LG Ad Solutions, which LG took a controlling stake in Alphonso in 2021 to build out its connected TV advertising and analytics business.

In September 2022 the company rolled its proprietary ACR technology across 27 countries including Australia, with the resulting data available exclusively through LG Ad Solutions.

The division markets that data openly.

Its published material offers advertisers targeting by programme, network, app, service or genre, by pay TV and ad free streaming loyalty, by new subscriptions, service activations and cancellations, purchases and rentals, by exposure to specific creative including a competitor’s advertising, and identification of gamers by platform, studio, title and console.

An LG Ad Solutions fact sheet claims 49 million webOS televisions in the United States, with total reach extending to 363 million “addressable secondary devices”, a figure well above its own TV installed base.

Regulators Already Circling

In May the Texas Attorney General announced a settlement requiring LG to obtain informed consent before collecting ACR viewing data and to offer a clear opt out, following a December lawsuit that also named Samsung, Sony, Hisense and TCL.

Gamers Nexus said it found the “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” toggle still switched off by default, before a buyer had connected the television to the internet or agreed to anything.

In Australia, complaints about the handling of personal information sit with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, while the ACCC has an active interest in dark patterns and default settings that work against consumers. Given ACR shipped into the Australian market in the 2022 rollout, the open question is whether Australian buyers of LG televisions sold through JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys and Harvey Norman are receiving the same consent flow LG has now agreed to in Texas.

Not LG’s First Brush

This is not the first time Gamers Nexus has taken aim at the brand. In July the channel flagged that some LG monitors were automatically installing an application that collected device data and served pop up promotions for LG’s own apps and for McAfee antivirus software.

In a notice dated 3 August, LG said the Monitor App Installer identified the model locally on the user’s PC, did not collect or transmit personal data, and only presented optional applications. The company said the McAfee trial recommendation had run for a limited period in the United States only, had never installed automatically, and had been removed. LG also said it was updating the installer so customers could choose whether they wanted it at all.

LG is not alone in deploying ACR. Samsung, Sony, TCL, Hisense, Vizio, Roku and Amazon Fire TV all use some form of content recognition, though user controls vary by vendor. Gamers Nexus is now crowdfunding a follow up investigation into Samsung, Vizio and others.