A two-hour and 15-minute video released by the "Gamers Nexus" channel, which claimed that LG TVs secretly surveil their users, has stirred extensive debate in the tech world.
According to ITNA quoting The Verge, the video alleges that LG TVs can record and store audio even when they appear to be off, monitor users' viewing behavior, and can even be hacked remotely and turned into spying devices.
These claims have enraged LG TV owners and tech enthusiasts, and LG's hasty response has not much calmed the situation.
However, according to an expert, part of the video's claims rest on speculation, although many of the raised concerns are real and widespread.
The key point is that LG is not the only company doing this; practically all TV manufacturers track users' behavior, collect that data, and share it with their commercial partners, with consent that users are usually not aware they have given.
Why have TVs become cheaper?
TV prices have dropped sharply in recent years, to the point that some companies sell them at a loss. But this shortfall is offset by selling behavioral data collected from the TV's operating system; the same reason that prompted Walmart in 2024 to acquire Vizio.
The key technology here is a system called Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, which is embedded in almost all modern smart TVs.
This technology takes snippets of the audio or video of the program being played (either from built-in apps or from the TV's external inputs), turns them into digital fingerprints, and sends them to a database for identification. It is this capability that makes personalized content recommendations and targeted advertising based on a user's viewing habits possible, and provides a tool for companies like Nielsen to measure viewership across platforms.
Consent users don't notice
To enable these features, the TV must obtain the user's consent; but a major criticism is that this consent is usually hidden within long and confusing agreements and companies use deceptive user-interface design patterns to obtain consent without the user's full awareness.
For example, Gamers Nexus's video shows an LG TV presenting six different user agreements and defaulting to "Select All," while only two of those agreements are truly necessary to continue using the device.
Ways to protect privacy
A TV reviewer who deals with these agreements daily recommends that users sign into TVs and streaming apps with a separate email unrelated to their personal account, accept only the mandatory items during setup, and after setup review all menu options and disable advertising tracking.
He also suggests, for greater security, disconnecting the TV's Wi‑Fi and Ethernet cable and instead using an external streaming device like Apple TV, which unlike many competitors does not use ACR technology.
More serious security concerns
A substantial portion of the Gamers Nexus video is devoted to more serious security issues; including recording room video and audio even when the TV appears off, sending local network information to LG servers, and logging background audio when using the microphone for voice search.
Gamers Nexus and the Level1Techs channel, leveraging a security vulnerability, achieved full (root) access to the TV and discovered these behaviors. With root access it was revealed that the TV's microphone, after being activated for voice search, continues recording for 10 to 15 seconds after the conversation ends.
However, Higgins says some of these findings were only possible after researchers manually increased microphone sensitivity and enabled a long‑range mic mode, and under normal user conditions such risk is more limited.
The ultimate solution is regulation
Torin Klosowski, senior privacy and security advocate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), says the only real way to address this situation is a comprehensive federal privacy law that requires informed opt‑in consent without deceptive design tricks and mandates data‑collection minimization. Until then, Higgins says the best users can do is limit as much as possible the information they share.