cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51634640
A new Gamers Nexus investigation found a retail LG TV actively scanning the local network for phones, laptops, smartwatches and other connected devices, while also capturing microphone audio when the screen appeared to be in standby. The investigation found voice data being stored locally even after the TV was disconnected from the network, with the queued data uploaded once connectivity returned. Researchers also uncovered webOS vulnerabilities that could potentially turn the television into a remotely controlled surveillance device. The really unsettling part isn’t just the advertising angle. It’s the fact that a consumer television can sit inside your trusted network, enumerate other devices, access a microphone, store collected data locally and communicate with external infrastructure. Put that same device in a corporate office, hospital, hotel or conference room and the security implications become considerably more serious. I went through the investigation in detail, including the network scanning, microphone behavior, ACR, webOS attack surface, offline data collection and practical mitigations
anybody know when this started? i don’t have my tv connected to the network, and have not updated the firmware in 2 r 3 years.
“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 these articles are referencing btw. Support them and their work. Get some cool shirts and physical media while you’re at it.
I’m watching the main one right now (your second link). Holy shit.
Don’t connect TVs to your network.
And according to the article the data collection runs even if it’s disconnected. So, don’t ever connect it to the network. As soon as you do everything gets uploaded.
Could I burn a hole through a WiFi chip with a soldering iron?
Only one way to find out.
Oops I meant to reply to the person saying Gamer’s Nexus found LG televisions connect without permission to any insecure Wi-Fi networks within range in your neighbourhood. Otherwise it’d seem a bit extreme to burn a hole through it :p
My TV is too old for this to matter yet but I’d research a way to physically disable network hardware before buying any specific model next time.
how is it collecting and sending data if not connected to a network?
i read the article, it still needs a connection
It’s not sending them, just collecting them. Then it sends them the moment you connect. They even transcribe speech to text via mic, according to GN they send about 4GB/month… IN TEXT FILES!
How much storage could it possibly have?
The person you are replying to said that the smart TV collects spy data onto a hard drive even when it’s not connected.
Then once the TV acquires a connection, it dumps the entire drive worth of spy data to the mothership.
The danger here is obvious, I think.
i just misread their post originally
You know how some people rent their wifi routers?
That’s the backbone
if it’s connecting without your explicit permission each time how us that not a worm
Because it is done by a wealthy corporation. See also: rootkits from Sony.
that shit should have been a jail term
but i stopped buying sony over it
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lol i missed the entire second part
and i meant i read the article
not you read the article
Read and read and reed and reed. Love english
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yea because
read
read
read the same, i was trying to be clear
i’m saying you are right, relax, i must have skipped over your second sentence on
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This would’ve worked just a few years back but due to shitty “age verification” laws, even TV manufacturers willl force users to create an account the very least for the TV to even start up. They may also implement an always-online model and they’ll justify that it’s necessary to monitor users for “age verification purposes”. ATP better to get a good monitor and use it as TV cuz cable or satellite boxes are either way gonna be provided by the network companies so that’s there
This would’ve worked just a few years back but due to shitty “age verification” laws, even TV manufacturers willl force users to create an account the very least for the TV to even start up.
Surely only for “smart” features but without enabling any of that shit, you shouldn’t get any age verification prompt.
I could see them doing it anyway as OTA broadcasts include rating data.
That said, if it’s a family TV, you’re never going to put everyone on it, just the oldest one anyway.
Impossible - no one would buy them, and that idea would die.
[citation needed]
A citation… of a would be scenario? My what a confusing comment.
I think their point is that by and large consumers are stupid and willing to put up with almost any garbage like that. What makes you think otherwise?
Where is the original citation showing you cannot use a tv disconnected, without setting up an account?
This whole thread is nonsense.
What emb said. When in the history of the universe did consumers reject a product like that? You do realize Alexa and Google speakers are still very popular and tons of people wear watches with GPS, sleep tracking, heart rate tracking and always turned on BT?
Although usb stick firmware updating is super annoying
The TV should just act as a TV with input ports. Why update the firmware?
I’ve had to update for ALLM support and such. So feature support. I don’t care for the TV’s OS updates
So I should connect it to someone elses network?
Works for now, but my fear is when that may not broadly be the case.
This is the only correct answer. Discussion over.
I wonder if any of such devices use nbiot or alike…
Really makes one wonder…How many fucking data points do these assholes need telling them we’re too fucking broke for their game and want their heads on pikes?
Enough that they can tell with a decent amount of certainty whose social credit score should be lowered, once that gets inevitably introduced /s
(I don’t think that conspiratorially… It’s probably just data harvesting and extreme greed.)
sarcasm not necessary here. this is exactly where this is going.
That social credit works only as long as you want to buy shit. If you’re like me and don’t even own a credit card, these assholes have zero power over any aspect of my life because anything they own/control, I wouldn’t want to use anyhow. They are only professional capitalists because the public are amateur consumers.
Unless it gets to the point where it’s impacting where you can live or work
Self-employed. Can live and work wherever… You don’t get rich, but you also don’t get trapped…
The issue is that they don’t care, they sell the data to others and they get to spin it while doing it. Its not selling data (that you are broke) to an advertiser, its the idea of that advertiser falling behind if they don’t buy your data (that you are broke).
At least 13k
It’s hard to find a dumb TV.
Monitors and projectors are going the same way. Not connecting them might not be enough.Time to learn how to use a soldering iron.
modern ones are soldered directly to the board and integrate bluetooth into the same chip and removing that chip form the board could remove the ability to use bluetooth functions and the remote, however!!! most have usb ports!!! lets make new operating systems and fucking delete their file system, load a new os that lacks the abilities these manufactures have.
The hardware is whatever but if we remove the file systems that its preloaded with it won’t be able to load any of its preinstalled shit. If we mod the operating system we can mod some of the shit the hardware is capable of doing through the software and coding. Kinda like how windows 11 is known for lowering ram speed.
Why are you concerned with the USB ports?
I think he’s suggesting said OS could be installed using them.
Thanks, threw me for a loop when they recommended trying to unsolder a chip from the sbc and expecting it to still work as a tv at all.
It is like trying to find a new car that doesn’t have one of those fucking screens instead of a real console.
I keep my tv dumb by not connecting it to a network.
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Remember: all that is done simply to give LG executives, like, a few dozen bucks over the device’s lifetime.
Customer privacy means nothing at all to them. They sell it for pocket change.
Fuck LG, this is creepy AF
… Well great, now I have to check whether my television has a goddamn microphone for some reason. I didn’t think to check because it’s a television.
Never connected it to the Wifi though.
Doesn’t anything with a speaker have an inherent shitty microphone?
Does it have voice command capability?
I don’t care that companies thought they’d get away with this, the problem is have are the people buying this shit! This should’ve been enough to get people to just refuse to buy it but no.
And the bigger problem isn’t what we know they can do, you have to think about what it ‘could’ do.
Even if you never connect this stuff to the internet, they could still track all this stuff locally. Once that happens, which no doubt it will if not already, what happens if suddenly you get arrested for something, they confiscate the TV, download all the stuff tracked, and oops, something even more incriminating… maybe you watched an illiegal movie on jellyfin! 😲
Look at all the “People will never let it happen” that has happened pretty much unchallenged… you’ll have no privacy, and you’ll all be paying for it!
The problem is not that people are buying this willingly, it’s because they don’t know. If you present them two rougly similar options, but one of them is a spying machine, people will choose the other one. This stuff should not be legal in the first place.
The problem’s that what’s presented is a cheap machine vs an expensive machine. Guess which one spies on you?
That’s true, but the law should be the first line of defence against practices like this - you can’t expect every person to do thorough research on every appliance they buy.
Yeah, caveat emptor worked in an era where there were a lot of sellers and not that many ways to screw over customers, especially as most people weren’t buying a wide range of products. I should be able to assume that my appliances aren’t working against me, especially when it’s becoming more difficult to purchase ones that don’t
That’s not true at all. The LG OLED (C5, G5) are very expensive. I paid over 1300$ for my C4 last year and just learned that LG is pulling this shit.
The majority of people do not realize how much information is being recorded and what it’s used for. If there was an easy way to track down how a telemarketer got your information, a lot more people would freak out and demand change.
The majority of people do not
realizecare how much information is being recorded and what it’s used for.
What exactly is the alternative? Every tv manufacturer is doing this. Buying a commercial display isn’t the answer.
Scepter.
(I dunno if they’re doing it yet or not but I bought a dumb TV and a dumb monitor from them and I really hope they stay dumb)
It’s not just LG. It’s all of them.
And, the cheaper the TV, the more often and intrusive these settings are.
It’s honestly better to just have a bare wall and a projector.
It’s honestly better to just have a bare wall and a projector.
Consumer projectors come with the same “smart” shit as TVs these days. Just don’t connect either to WiFi. Problem solved.
Apparently not solved. They can connect to open (and hidden) networks without your consent.
Per the marketing chief at LG; (paraphrased, from memory) “we own the glass, and we know everything beyond the glass.”
They can connect to open (and hidden) networks without your consent.
That’s a wild claim and either I accidentally skipped a paragraph in the article or you should cite a source. Quick googling doesn’t show up anything of that sort for me.
It’s in the 2h long Gamersnexus video. The TVs aren’t connecting to open WiFi networks but connecting to other LG TVs within range. That forms some sort of mesh network that lets the TV access the internet. Apparently it’s not illegal wardriving because “they own the glass”.
I don’t have any specific evidence on hand, but I do know a lot about the technology and companies involved from working in adjacent fields (cloud architecture) and it is absolutely plausible that they can and do. If they are not doing it already (and I believe it is highly doubtful that at least some devices do not already do this) then it is certainly on their roadmap. Many consumer IoT/media devices have invisible, hidden wireless networks built in and have for years. If it’s advertised, it may boast some sort of “quick connect”, “auto configuration” or other convenience feature, it may be genuinely required for low-latency/quality-of-service (for example on most modern TV services which supply the channels by IPTV behind the scenes), but it’s always on, it’s always listening, and it’s only a friendly partnership agreement away from being used for whatever “legitimate” purposes a company may dream of.
Tech surveillance is extremely out of hand and has gone so far beyond anything would consider reasonable, I understand that you would instinctively reject it as too extreme to be believable. But in the industry it’s completely normalized and they don’t even give it a second thought, it’s just business as usual.
Look for articles about amazons sidewalk network and devices that connect to it without any kind of authorization from users.
That shit has been around since the echo came out and it’s open to any manufacturer.
There’s are lots of articles but my phone is too slow to load them at the moment.
I looked for but didn’t find any about LG TVs, the actual topic here and what the wild claim was made about.
I’m not sure if LG connects to it, but it’s an open standard and like LoRa, has a decent range, so there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping them from adding it to their TVs.
Plus from the article:
It also picks up the SSIDs and signal strengths of neighboring Wi-Fi networks visible to its wireless radio, building a rough map of the surrounding area, and includes location data tied to those network identifiers in what it collects.
This is active scanning, not passive listening: the television initiates the queries, processes the responses, and packages the results into structured data. The researchers confirmed the behavior happens out of the box, with no extra configuration needed, and found no setting that disables the LAN sweep on its own, separate from other smart features.
It doesn’t mention connecting automatically to unsecured networks, but it sounds like one OTA update away from that capability (The sidewalk network works this way, which is why I mentioned it). LG is already lying about the transcriptions taking place, so there’s no reason to trust them, which I think the point of this thread was.
I’m looking for a source as well. The “apparently” I used was supposed to cover the whole comment, but I can see how it didn’t.
The video goes into detail, and could be staged, but comments seem to support the idea anyway.
Amazon devices are known to do this with other Amazon products to create a mesh.
It’s not outside the realm of possibility.
It’s honestly better to just have a bare wall and a projector.
From a privacy point of view: yes. From every other: not so much.
Projectors have become amazing.
Projectors have become amazing.
Yeah and consumer oriented ones have their own apps and Google TV integration and the like, so no idea how a different image displaying tech would be a solution to privacy invasive TVs.
But they require dark room. Where I live in summer it gets dark at 23:00 so you need great curtains or you can’t see anything most of the day. If you have curtains you have to watch everything in complete darkness. This is fine for a movie night but people like to watch news or watch a game with their friends over some food. You also need extra device to handle apps like Jellyfin. Things like BT can be more complicated to set up (my TV handles multiple BT devices nicely).
Projectors are basically great for one or two things (home theater and gaming) but are bad for everything else.
I was at my parent’s house, trying to add some items to the smart TV. They started listening to these awful AI interpersonal dramas read by AI, on YouTube.
My thought was to add some podcasts and their Audible account, for more selections. Maybe they’ll still only listen to that, even so. You can’t add much to a smart tv. No podcasts. No podcast app. A pretty spartan selection of apps. Even something as large and mainstream as Audible. No go. Libby? Yeah, right.
I don’t get it. What’s the point? Just buy a monitor, jack it into a PC for media, and have everything you want minus this telemetry.
Just buy a monitor, jack it into a PC for media, and have everything you want minus this telemetry.
I have some bad news for you:
Ah doesn’t matter. Dont use windows. Use a pi and something like LibreELEC or even you can run debloated android on it with the TV interface and a remote. Just get a BT remote or an IR receiver plug into the usb port. Either of them are pretty cheap
We’re fully Linux now, various distros per machine, so I no longer pay much attention to windows news.
My TV has no Internet connection, but does connect to my gaming desktop. I agree with you. There’s no reason TVs should not just be dumb displays. I do also have the Apple TV, but it never ever shows ads and is a one-time purchase. The day it starts showing me ads is the day it meets the bin.
There’s no reason TVs should not just be dumb displays.
At least, no reason that benefits the consumer. There are strong monetary incentives to spy on customers and sell the data that’s collected.
Once again I’m reminded of Season 1 of Black Mirror. Second episode? Worker drone is “home”, “relaxing” in his sleep cubby and the walls are a barrage of ads. Occasionally he taps to pay credits to shut one down as the rest continue, as casual as anyone scrolling in boredom.
Or a shut down golden retriever in those old, now illegal learned helplessness experiments.
Fingers crossed the new Apple TV box is announced this week, I am waiting to finally switch over
jack it into a PC for media
Even a proprietary streaming stick like FireTV would be an improvement because it only collects telemetry from the stick itself and not devices connected to other HDMI ports.
Probably safe to assume every other smart TV brand is doing the same, but just no one has gone to the effort to check…
This is why TVs cost close to nothing these days. If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
There’s no “might” here. It’s why high-end TVs are cheap.
Bosch fucking dishwashers do this, once connected there is no way to disconnect them so I sink all its outgoing traffick at the router level
Complete garbage
Yeah, what kind of idiot wants an internet-connected dishwasher?
How about an AI-powered pair of chopsticks?
In a perfect world?
I’d love access to diagnostic data. Is the filter starting to clog? Is any part not working as intended? I’m a big fan of preventative maintenance, but also really bad at sticking to an arbitrary recurring schedule (e.g., clean the filter every 6 months). This could also be accomplished with Bluetooth and an offline-only app on the phone.
In the real world? Nobody provides this, and the privacy risks aren’t worth it.
I do have my dishwasher on a ZigBee power meter to 1) track energy use and 2) give me a good-enough estimate of time remaining by starting a 2h timer after it starts.
You CAN do this with a few products of diff companies with the help of home assistant and plugins BUT many companies are pulling off support OR restricting features to its own app and giving free access to the bare minimum voa protocols like matter and all. I read somewhere on reddit that a robovac company had matter access technically but only the vac on off switch access was there and none of the other basic functions. For that you need their app. But again, still some companies do support all it’s features on home assistant. Many light fixtures, switches, ACs and much more support it. So yes you can run them locally BUT it all depends on the manufacturer how much control they are willing to provide openly
This could also be accomplished with Bluetooth and an offline-only app on the phone.
But WHY! If those diags are important, then just put them in the local display of the machine itself.
That costs money.
exactly! it’s so useless they had to hide regular features under the wifi connection to force customer’s hand
Why would you connect a dishwasher to the internet? Setting a timer can tell you just as well if the dishes are clean.
Sadly, the only way to change most of the settings or running a cleaning cycle is via the app. It’s insane.
No way in hell id buy that. Soon as the app is dead so is your dishwasher, at the whim of the manufacturer
Planned obsolescence is great isn’t it. /s I try to keep my appliances on life support as long as I can.
Mh. What about… creating a guest network, connecting that abomination to that and deleting the guest network? Hopefully it can remember only one…
Why wouldn’t a company this dedicated to advertising just install a cheap cell network modem in them? You’re talking pennies on a device that costs hundreds of dollars.
While this is possible, ongoing network costs are involved with that. Also, hard to hide a cell network modem.
Not so sure if that is done when many people connect their device to their WiFi anyway, if they are forced to because some settings can be changed only with the app?
My TV is wired to the router but blocked from WAN access.
Only connected to the internet to install jellyfin on it.
