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.
Bring on the TV firmware. Jailbreak your consoles. Use Linux or steal windows and use tools to completely rip its spyware out of it (e.g. https://revi.cc/).
Custom firmware anywhere and everywhere a device that someone supports with custom firmware is a feature worth researching.
The fucks are only going to jeep doing it. Protect yourself. Push for GDPR like laws in the US. California’s privacy laws are headed in the right direction.
This is a felony in most 2 party consent states.
accountablity? none. consequences? none (maybe a slap on the wrist at most).
I think the original coverage from Gamers Nexus should also be linked here:
EU really should regulate against this kind of behaviour
Problem us that there are too few tech literate politicians
The problem is way worse: big tech
contributes tobribes politicians to vote according to industry interests.Problem is lobbying.
ding-ding-ding
AKA legal corruption
The problem is the system that allows for corruption to exist in the first place.
It’s not the politicians job to know everything but to make decisions and legislate based on information from the expertise. It is the people in the know that need to make the proposals for the politicians to bring it up. It’s us, the tech literate, that need to write proposals that are informative with arguments derived from trusted sources to make the politicians aware that these are concerns that need to be addressed.
Sadly, I don’t have time or money to do that. You know who does? Big tech does!
Let’s all lie belly up and do nothing and accept that nothing will ever change for the better because nobody else is doing it for us and it is impossible for us to change the world all alone. This is exactly the defeatist mindset that the economic elites want people to have.
You could do something small, like find out your representatives and write a personal mail to them, informing them from your point of view. With enough people doing small things and some doing big things the chances for things like this gaining traction are magnitudes bigger than giving up in advance. It takes a few hours to a few days depending on your dedication and whatever cost coffee is in your area of residence.
It’s so refreshing finding someone with that kind of opinion. I feel less lonely.
I can’t tell if this comment thread is filled with doomer basement dweller defeatists that use their worldview as excuse to not even try or foreign bot farms pushing said agenda.
It can be both.
Yeah sorry, it’s not just time and money,but also skill. I’m not the person you choose to convince people to do something. That’s why we choose representatives. That’s why we vote.
You have the time. Get off the internet.
Can’t you see I’m working right now?!
The fucked up part is that “expertise” is assumed to be exclusively found in the industry being regulated. Bill Gates is a respected industry expert, but RMS is just some dumbfuck nobody because he’s not “in the industry”.
It is the people in the know that need to make the proposals
No, it’s the politician’s job to get in touch with experts of any given field.
They prefer lobbyists instead because they are corrupt.After proposals come in, yes. If the only proposals coming in are from lobbyists of various corporations and interest groups, guess which matters are going to be on the table?
You’re still portraying the politician as a passive entity, they’re not.
And you seem to think that EU politics is a closed court accessible only for political royalty, which it is not.
It is a politicians job to know what they are doing in fact.
Read at least the entire first sentence before you feel the need to comment, my dude.
Don’t lead with garbage, how about that?
And this, kids, is why reading comprehension is so important. Don’t let media consumption rot your brain into a two second attention span that leaves you confused and angry by information beyond the rudimentary crafted to pander your reality tunnel.
Yes, Timmy you are correct. Before algorithmic video slop, very similar effects were observed from exposure to lead, and that’s why it was phased out of society. That does explain why your gramps is angrily waving his cane at anything complex for which there is no simple solution.
They could educate themselves or hire help, if they weren’t corrupt.
Maybe read what you write? No reason to make yourself look so dumb (and just to state the obvious, I’m not disagreeing at all, just pointing out what should be obvious but apparently isn’t).
It’s not principally they aren’t tech savy, it s that the politicians are corrupt.
EU lobbies won’t ever allow it.
In the later years the EU regulations have been massively disappointing. Only favouring big EU companies and destroying little businesses and the european consumers.
Some disappointing eu regulations:
-
The cookiesgate. Your data is still going around everywhere. You just have a pop up everywhere that means nothing.
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¿Replaceable batteries on smartphones? No, only for cheap chinese phones if so. The big players can pay for some european certification on the quality of their batteries and doesn’t need to be replaceable.
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¿Stop killing games? Hahahaha don’t ever think about it.
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You are buying too much, we need you poorer. So we put up a 3€ tariffs per
categoryproduct on chinese stores so you are forced to buy the exact same product to an european retailer at twice the price. -
We heard you like the environment, what about a new complicated tax on packaging so all small business cannot function and only big business are allowed to send products within the european union.
I think the days of the EU legislation saving the day are far off.
on chinese stores
Wrong. It’s on items purchased from any non-EU countries. So it also includes the Irish purchasing from UK.
Implying the British actually make anything the Irish want. Come on now lad. 🤣
Liberalism will always be corrupted by capitalism at the end of the the day. Maybe some systems last a decade or two longer, but it’s all bound to fall.
Liberals ARE capitalists. By definition.
What makes you define the EU as ideologically liberal?
IMHO Liberalism was manufactured by Capitalism as a left-sounding form of politics to allow mainstream parties which were genuinelly leftwing to move Right in Economic, Quality Of Life and even broad Equality whislt still appearing to be left-wing due to their pro-liberty posture on Moral and Social subjects.
I say this because I have yet to see any form of Liberalism in mainstream politics, ever, anywhere, which sought to maximize people’s freedom to access limitied or constrained resources which are required merelly to live, such as Land (which Land Ownership goes against), so I don’t think that at least in Politics there was ever any genuine Liberalism for Capitalism to corrupt.
And yet, they’ve been the best government on the planet for the working class.
That charge is not just on Chinese stores. I manufacture my own product in the usa through a factory i own and get hit with those fucking charges.
Then I’ve got to pay for all this cardboard and plastic but OH LOOK there’s a minimum fee so I’m subsidizing larger businesses or Europeans in general. AND I need to pay for a European contact to do it! Fuck yourselves for that one.
Eu regulation is hostile to small business and they will be left with nothing but major shitty international corps at this rate.
I mean the whole point of this is to subsidize small business in the EU at the expense of businesses outside the EU. The fact it is more difficult and costly for you is exactly the point. They want to support businesses and workers in the EU, because that’s where their people actually are, that’s where their taxes are, that’s where they support infrastructure and social programs.
It is true that it favors larger international corporations, because they have near monopolies and csn manage all of this at a smaller relative cost. The solution of course is to make tariffs and other import duties scale with the size of the company.
So the EU regulations are not perfect, they do hurt international small businesses while protecting in part local small businesses. They need, like everyone, to deal with the problem of international monopoly companies and restore more and more of their manufacturing and product development into more and more local small businesses.
In the USA, you say?
“Oh no”.
Anyway…
-
If anyone does, EU will be the first.
This is a good time to remind everyone to:
- Install Pi Hole, get LG rules to nerf all the telemetric data going out
- Jailbreak the TV, install SmartTube for your YouTube account without ads and live your best life
- Edit: since some people asked for a Pi Hole configuration, I found a couple of them that I’m going to try out and tweak:
I hope it helps!
Secretly recording conversations in peoples homes sounds like it should be against the law in a number of countries.
Imagine someone working for the government, security services, or a defence contractor. I suspect LG may be in trouble with a number of National Security agencies.
It is illegal. Unfortunately crime is legal for corporations. They just pay the crime fee and can continue undisturbed. Shareholders must be held responsible individually, otherwise it will only get worse.
Shareholders must be held responsible individually
So, are you personally on the hook here because the company managing your pension fund is holding stocks in LG? Because that technically makes you a shareholder as it was bought with your money, right?
Edit: not sure why I get downvoted, this is a legitimate concern/nuance to the debate. The managing company doesn’t own these stocks so they’re not the shareholders, that’s the people whose money they are managing, but these people are not directly in control of the funds. Who is the liable party in this?
The highest level employee/officer who had knowledge of it should be held responsible
Being deliberately ignorant should not be a defense. Just like it isn’t for the peasants.
you can’t prove they did.
I mean, depending on the scale you probably can with investigation.
It doesn’t matter how many layers of evasion there are. Responsibility has to be with individuals in order for there to be change.
If I don’t get executive say in what happens at the company, I am not included in liability. I am not allowed to sit on the damn board with my pension fund.
Executives and controlling board members get held personally liable. It really is as simple as that. If you are in the meetings, and you get a vote, you are liable. There is absolutely no slippery slope fallacy here.
Any bullshit “uhm actually you technically are a shareholder” is just trying to ward off people having to take responsibility for their decisions. (also, in many pension schemas you aren’t actually the shareholders, the investment fund technically is and you are just given the license to decide how they invest those funds and get a portion of the payout, but it is different than manually retail investing for example)
Ok, so shareholders shouldn’t be liable after all is what you are saying, only people having a say.
The fact that a pension fund can hold shareholds is crazy by itself, also, is the pension found a company or managed by your state? It shouldn’t really be a thing in first place
is the pension fund a company or managed by your state?
Both in my case, as there are both the government pension fund that is mandatory and the one used by my employer which uses one of the large primary pension institutions in my country.
Is it a bit weird that I don’t just manage all my pensions myself? Yes, a bit. But it’s how its done in my country and it has some tax benefits compared to getting the money in hand and investing myself.
Is it a bit weird that I don’t just manage all my pensions myself?
Naah, at least, i don’t know anyone that does it in my country
Me either. My union pension is controlled by the union and managed by a bank as far as I can tell.
90 percent of stocks are owned by ten percent of Americans. Just throwing this fact out here
That might stop this madness.
See the thing is if your pension also funds a murder company does outsourcing who manages it not make you at least a little culpable? I think it does and i think the only way to stop this madness is for a little justice to come your way.
does outsourcing who manages it not make you at least a little culpable
What if i have no control over who manages it? I have two, one is government managed and mandatory, the other is part of my salary (and mandatory) and who manages my company paid pension is decided by my employer. I have no control of either aside from general risk profile and high level market groups on my company paid pension (e.g. “tech” or “renewable energy”).
That just sounds like a good way to destroy index funds.
Okay.
Also, which shareholders? Shareholders have no say in the business decisions outside of the annual voting for board members and whatever broad issues are brought up for a vote. If someone holds stock and then sells it before a vote, are they responsible for the business decisions? If a swing trader bought and then sold in one day/week/month (even at a loss), how much is their liability? If someone sells their shares just before a vote, then buys them again after, are they liable?
Not shareholders. Decision makers. Upper management. Shareholders should pay in share value (the financial penalty to the corporations should be high enough to affect that), bu the personal an criminal responsibility belongs to managers, CEO in particular.
There should at least be something resembling an attempt of investigating, who, where, and when signed an order to implement this shit into their products. That way they will at least think twice if they want to risk the chance of being held personally responsible.
Recording without consent is very much a crime in any two-party state, but my guess is that the TOS that people click past to use the TV gives them permission to record you. If it didn’t, they would be in big legal hot water.
Clicking through ToS does not magically make illegal things legal.
Consenting to recording makes recording legal.
Making that consent required to use the TV or its features and it being buried within lengthy, opaque terms of service in a country with a low level of literacy should be illegal, but it stands in the US because it’s a consumer hostile country.
A TOS presented after an electronic device has been sold is not valid in most of the World since it’s considered an attempt to, after the sale, force a change of the terms of the implicit contract which is the sale.
A company can shove whatever they want in front of the customer as contract conditions they have to accept for a sale before the sale - by which point the potential customer can refuse and not buy or accept and buy - not after.
Of course, they don’t do that because they would lose most sales, so instead there’s a TOS or EULA which the owners of the devices are forced to agree to after the sale to fully enjoy that which they bought, but these are really just legal fictions in most countries.
Mind you, this does not apply to a subscription to an ongoing service, though even then at least in Europe, there are conditions they much obbey to have the customer accept a TOS or a TOS change after subscribing, such as it being possible for the customer to cancel the service at no cost rather than accept the new TOS.
Unconscionable bunk. It’s illegal anyway, just like how you can’t sign a contract to sell yourself into slavery.
If the courts won’t enforce it, vigilantes should.
“In any two-party state” what? That’s such a weird thing to say. Two-party systems are a worse version of applied democracy, that should be incredibly obvious. I just seriously don’t understand why you would even think about saying that it’s a crime in two-party states only, it’s so odd. If anything two-party states are more akin to not having strong laws against that because of the very fact of it. Look at the US, which I’m guessing is a big part of your mind in this. Do yourself a favor and search for countries two-party systems and their laws on this compared to actual democracies with more parties.
Call recording laws in some U.S. states require only one party to be aware of the recording, while other states generally require both parties to be aware. Several states require that all parties consent when one party wants to record a telephone conversation.
Should be. Hope it happens and quickly
Only in trouble if they didn’t loop them in on the audio feeds.
Or hired by those same agents of authority.
“We own the glass, we own the TV, we own the living room. We know who is in an LG home.” –LG President of Ads
These are the Gamers Nexus videos btw. Support them and their work. Get some cool shirts and physical media while you’re at it.
What is so dumb is he is banned from running a public company so they get him to run a private company. WTF the oligarchs are really this bad.
“The toaster is listening” in 2006 🤣
“The toaster is listening” in 2026 😬
It’s 1984 for sure. Every devices listens.
Frakking toasters.
SO SAY WE ALL!
Every day I’m grateful I bought a screen and not a “smart” TV
I mean I know it’s about LG but they are all doing this.
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 part of their business model.
Hoping for prosecution from the EU and at least one other country.
I’m hoping not only prosecution, but an actual outcome such that they (and other companies) are afraid to try this again.
If all they get is a small fine that’s just a business expense to them, then of course they’ll continue doing sh** like this.
from the EU and at least one other country.
EU is not a country.
Current Commission is pushing for chatcontrol so they’d probably applaud LG’s practices.
LOL
I knew someone would point that out.
“other” in this case is shorthand for “not in EU”.
The EU is not a country, yet it does stuff that otherwise countries do, like legislating and judicating privacy laws. The correct term would have been “other political entity” but what is the point of that word picking again?
Like any political entity the EU can do many things at once, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Different institutions also have different interests. The Commission isn’t the primary driver behind chat control, a number of member states are. At the same time EU courts tend to be staunchly opposed to mass surveillance and in the European Parliament it depends on the party.
Current Commission is pushing for chatcontrol so they’d probably applaud LG’s practices.
Just because they want to spy on you doesn’t mean they are okay with other organizations spying on you.
I’ll let the EU prove me wrong.
there was a time… long past I suppose …when this would have been an outrage and politicians would be holding press conferences where they took crowbar swings to such devices. Things sure have changed.
This is why my tv’s don’t get internet access.
My TVs don’t get connected to the network because TV companies have started showing ads, and that was bad enough. Then came the fact that a lot of TV apps were making your TV into a residential proxy, making your TV into part of a botnet. And now, on top of all that, they’re spying on you.
The ads were bad enough.
In any reasonable world you would have control over devices in your house that contained computers and would be able to remove bad software and install your own stuff. But, these devices are all covered by section 1201 of the DMCA which makes it a crime to bypass any access control software. This is how Apple is able to block alternate app stores. It’s why printer ink is the most expensive liquid on the planet. It’s why John Deere is able to remotely brick a tractor anywhere in the world, and prevent farmers from fixing their own farm equipment.
What’s especially galling about this is that, the US forced the rest of the world to adopt this bullshit as a part of trade treaties, threatening that any country that didn’t do it might lose tariff-free access to the US economy. And now what happened? Trump just ripped up those treaties anyhow and imposed the tariffs anyhow.
I just wish there was a country brave enough to rip up the IP agreements the US forced on them and allow us to actually own our own stuff again.
They speculated it could connect anyway via some router brands, that allow specific devices to connect automatically. Since cases like that happened.
So if it’s range of neighbours’ routers, you might be fucked anyway. They didn’t confirm it though, to be clear.
He hacked it without internet access and also show that they can collect data without internet access
This is why I don’t buy smart TVs in the first place.
Unless you’re buying a commercial screen of some kind, you can’t really buy dumb TVs anymore, at least not from the major brands.
You can still buy dumb TVs you just have to search for them. You can also go off brand and get a dumb TV from a brand like sceptre.
I searched and couldn’t find a modern OLED from a reputable brand that didn’t have “smart” features.
I just don’t have a TV.
Is this even possible or reasonable? Smart tvs are pretty dumb if you never connect them to the internet, so no issues until they decide to add 5g chips to them
Or… If your neighbor has an open network… Or the TV has a secret networking protocol that allows it to talk to other LG smart devices that are on a network. Or it looks for phones that have the LG app installed… You get the idea. Once you put wireless capabilities in it, there is any number of ways it can leak your data out.
My solution here (this is my solution; i recognize 99.5% of people would never do this) is to open up the tv and physically remove any wifi adapters or cards. Obviously not stopping them from hiding them, but being under the plastic shell is enough to stop most people
I was wondering about this type of fix. Just physically disconnecting, desoldering, or even destroying the wifi hardware and microphone(s). I’m sure they have the usual passive anti-tampering stuff, but I’m guessing it won’t brick the TV if you’re careful and know what you’re doing. Not that I know what I’m doing. But I’m capable of following a YouTube video showing me how to.
Sure prove it. At least these are proven and now your just making stuff up.
Proving it is the hard and expensive part. I don’t really have the time, skillset, or money to buy a bunch of LG or other branded IoT devices, put them in an isolated test chamber and then try to decode all the RF noise come off them.
That being said, all the technical requirements to do the things I suggested in my previous comment currently exist in those smart TVs. All that was preventing LG from doing that was consumer trust, and they’ve clearly thrown that in the garbage. At this point, based on previous behavior, it should be assumed that they will go as far as possible to exfil customer data without their consent or knowledge, until proven otherwise.
I didn’t read the article and I’ve only watched the “trailer” for Gamers Nexus’ series on this so far, but I bet they actually do check this at some point.
Non-smart TVs are still available, they just cost a bit more. As for the connectivity issue, China has been caught hiding 5g chips in electrical control systems and city buses, and selling “free streaming” boxes with malware that scans networks and attacks targets deemed worth while. And all these TVs are being manufactured in China so why take the risk when you aren’t going to use the connectivity anyway?
Specifically which ones? Are they any good? HDR, color accuracy etc?
I went with Sceptre, as for the specs, I’m half blind so all I can say is I can see everything clearly.
Bingo. No need to connect your display.
Yep an isolated vlan with no internet access. Cast your media from a dongel or computer connected via hdmi.
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.
I saw this linked the other day. I haven’t looked into it deeply or done it.
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.
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.
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.
Go look up “tivoization”. GPLv2 isn’t enough to protect you from this shit.
