Is your TV spying on you? We’ll answer that question in a few minutes. 1st I want to tell you about my youngest son, John. 

Happily, John is living and working in East Wenatchee now. But there was a time when he joined the Navy. Eventually became an electronics technician. And worked at maintaining radar and radio communications equipment for the navy. 

He has some definite opinions on how secure our communications are on smartphones. That’s why he uses a flip phone. This relates to what LG is now doing.

Is someone listening to you through your TV? 

There’s new evidence that indicates that some TVs are less secure than others. Some intentionally that way. 

According to msn.com,
‘LG smart televisions can scan home networks for other connected devices and capture microphone audio even while their screens appear to be turned off, according to an investigation by Gamers Nexus. 
The investigation, conducted with Level1Techs and independent security researchers, examined retail LG OLED televisions, including the company’s G5 model, one of their flagship products.’ 

I find this a little disturbing because I have an LG television in my home. Admittedly, it’s a much older LG television, so it probably doesn’t have this capability. 

Researchers using a network protocol analyzer claimed that LG televisions were actually actively searching for networks, logging their signal strength, their name, and location data.  

A branch of the company called LG AD Solutions. (A targeted advertising business.) Claims that they have access to Hundreds of millions of “secondary addressable devices” in the US and they do this by identifying hardware sharing networks with their televisions. (I can’t believe that this is legal without my consent.) 

OK, it gets worse.

Another aspect of these televisions is called “Automatic Content Recognition” or ACR. The ACR system is designed to help the TV track what shows a user is watching. But the problem is that it’s Listening to more than just the audio from the TV. 

Researchers tested LG TVs by turning them off and finding that the microphone in the TV was continuing to hear and store audio even though the screen was off and in standby mode. Even more alarming, (at least to me) the researchers then disconnected the ethernet cable from the TV, and it still continued to gather audio. When the ethernet cable was plugged back in the TV updated itself and uploaded the information it had gathered when it was unplugged from the web. (OK, now I’m freaking out just a little bit.) 

Not without my consent.

I’m sure that LG has a very legitimate explanation as to why these TV’s do this. But I can’t imagine what kind of explanation they would have that would satisfy me. If I’m buying a new TV in the future. I want the microphone and the camera that’s built into the TV to have some kind of off switch, and if it doesn’t have that option I’m not buying it. 

Even a decade ago. I would have said “come on, take your tinfoil hat off and welcome to the next century”. Now I’m not so sure.