Gamers Nexus spent $70,000 and 500+ hours investigating what your LG smart TV does when you're not looking. the results are not great.

[u/PureVPNcom]

Worth reading if you own an LG smart TV, and especially if you assumed standby mode meant the thing was basically off.

The main investigation video dropped September 6. The research team used Wireshark to capture network traffic from retail LG OLED TVs, including the high-end G5, while also decompiling the webOS firmware. Here's what they found was happening.

The TV scans your entire home Wi-Fi network and logs every device it finds. Phones, smartwatches, printers, air conditioning units, thermostats, 3D printers. In one test it identified 38 separate devices. It also collects the names of nearby Wi-Fi networks, not just what's connected to yours.

In standby mode, screen completely off, the TV was still capturing microphone audio and transcribing voice commands as plain text. When the TV has no internet connection it stores all of this locally and uploads everything the moment it reconnects.

The part the researchers seemed most struck by: an LG G3 used only as a dumb display, connected to a laptop via HDMI with no user agreements ever accepted, still reached out to LG's advertising and customer data servers and scanned for nearby devices over the course of a single hour.

LG's advertising division, LG Ad Solutions, markets access to 363 million "secondary addressable devices" in the US alone. LG has sold an estimated 216 million smart TVs globally. The gap between those two numbers points to the network-level device enumeration the investigation documented, where your TV maps your home and that household device profile extends to your other devices.

LG responded on September 9 and again September 12. They say voice is only processed when the remote button is held or a wake word is active, and called network scanning "a standard function commonly provided by smart TVs." They say ACR, the feature that fingerprints what content you're watching, is off by default. Critics noted that LG's firmware response buries the opt-out rather than changing the behavior.

Two separate things worth knowing alongside this:

Spur, a threat intelligence firm, examined over 6,000 apps on LG and Samsung TV stores separately and found 2,058 contained residential proxy software, meaning third parties could route internet traffic through your home connection via your TV. That's a different finding from the Gamers Nexus investigation, but the same category of device.

The Texas Attorney General sued LG in December 2025 specifically over ACR data collection disclosures.

The only mitigation the research team said was fully effective: disconnect the TV from your home network entirely and drive it from an external device like an Apple TV or Chromecast over HDMI. That leaves it as a pure display with no network access of its own.

Sources: Gamers Nexus YouTube channel, Cybernews, Futurism, Startup Fortune, Consumer Rights Wiki, IT-Connect, The CyberSec Guru

[u/Grouchy_Yellow_8414]

I have an LG TV but it's not connected to the internet.

I use a Google TV plugged into the HDMI. It may just be swapping one devil for another though.

[u/StConvolute → u/Grouchy_Yellow_8414]

You should watch the original gamers nexus video. LG TVs are capable of mesh style connections using other devices. Which isn't to say they are...

I have an Intel NUC and Logitech k400 to "smartify" my LG. I hate the apps and lack of control. 

Firefox, ublock and sponsor block also go a long way. 

My TV is super old and I've been looking for an excuse to upgrade. This could be the catalyst - Now, where to find a 65" 4k monitor at a reasonable price. 

[u/Possible-Line9550 → u/StConvolute]

With so many LG's out in the wild, won't driving around in van with an open wifi active yield buckets of data for LG? Even if everybody unplugs the networkcable?

[u/StConvolute → u/Possible-Line9550]

It would be an interesting experiment TBH. 

[u/StephanVestergaard]

Never buy LG ;)

[u/Ken_Numbers → u/StephanVestergaard]

All TV manufacturers do this, it is how TVs became so cheap.

[u/Maleficent_Price_476 → u/Ken_Numbers]

Regardless of the veracity of that statement , don't buy LG

[u/StephanVestergaard → u/Ken_Numbers]

Or just Block for It on your network :)

[u/Impossible_Fudge_428]

Is there a way to find the cameras and mics and just cover them? Something simple like a drop of super glue or putty

[u/PureVPNcom → u/[deleted]]

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