LG Denies Allegations of Spying Through Its TVs

This week the outlet Gamers Nexus, the Level1Techs channel, and independent security experts described some troubling findings: LG televisions, according to their data, keep logs of what happens in the room and upload that information to servers. Now the manufacturer is publicly contesting these conclusions, stating that “some recent media reports may have created a false impression of how LG's Smart TVs work.”

What LG says

In its statement the company insists that its “televisions do not continuously record or transmit users' conversations,” and that recognition of the wake word that summons the assistant is processed entirely on the device itself. However, as The Verge points out, everything hinges on the word “continuously”: Gamers Nexus demonstrated that an LG television kept extensive logs of background conversations long after the assistant should, seemingly, have stopped listening.

LG also stresses that features such as automatic content recognition (ACR), voice control, and targeted advertising are “optional” and “disabled by default.” According to the company, ACR technology uses audio fingerprints captured by the television's internal audio processor (rather than the microphone) to determine exactly what the viewer is watching, and “does not collect screenshots, screen recordings, video, voice recordings, or any other audio recordings.”

What the company left unsaid

What is telling is what LG's response leaves out. The manufacturer sidestepped the broader questions: how much data it actually collects, whom it shares it with, how vulnerable its features are to abuse by bad actors, and why the privacy settings are presented to the user in such a confusing way.

As a result, the official rebuttal turned out to be more a clarification of wording than a substantive answer to the researchers' concerns. The company denies “continuous” surveillance, but does not explain why a television would need to store detailed logs of background conversations in the first place, or what happens to that data afterward.

Source: The Verge