I’m interested in what they are doing with the information more than anything. It’s not unusual for a media device to be using SSDP/UPNP and mDNS, looking for media devices to connect to. Ideally, off by default with a way to enable/disable and not used for advertising.
LG owns an advertising company. Just like Google tracks everything you do on the internet via their analytics and search products and then feeds you targeted ads, LG tracks everything you watch, all the electronics in your house, and any conversations you have nearby, then feeds you ads through their TVs.
Just like google is an advertising company first and everything else second it’s probably a good idea to think of LG as an advertising company that happens to have a consumer electronics company bolted on. Their TVs are nothing but trojan horses these days, designed to spy on everything they can and get ads in front of your face.
Scanning for phones sounds a bit like the old-school Nielsen viewing statistics collection - who’s in the room, what are they watching?
Mostly targeting advertising. The original source is the GamerNexus video. They show in great details the kind of information they capture and give potential usage for it. For instance they can detect thermostats, air conditioning units and air purifier that may be on the network, products that LG also sells. They give another example: if they see you have an iPhone 13, they may send you ads for the new iPhone 17.
If you can detect and identify the other devices on the LAN, you know exactly which other smart devices the customer has, and at scale that’s very valuable market research. They could probably even start sending ads to customers for an LG replacement if a device drops off the network.
On that note, does anybody know a good set top box with DolbyVision support that doesn’t require Amazon or Google services?
Because the only one that comes to my mind would be an AppleTV and I don’t want to believe that’s the least terrible option…Hate to break it to you, but AppleTV really is the best option.
I haven’t tried it, but I would think that running something shitty like a Roku but gating it with a pi-hole would be reasonable. You just have to make sure that there’s no open networks within reach (neighbors, etc).
AppleTV really is the best option.
Best for who? There are all kinds of options starting from a physical DVD player…
the older my Shield gets, the more I end up looking at the apple TV as the least worst of the bunch. until some foss Linux approach gets easy enough for me to be satisfied it won’t drive the rest of the household mad, that is
Yup. I went Apple TV for our main TV. Apple TV is easy for rest of the household and isn’t a huge Trojan horse. Retired the shield to the upstairs bedroom.
it’s a trojan horse for Apple though right? Apple still collects tons of telemetry they’ve just never been caught selling it
True. But also, a Linux box at the TV just isn’t practical when you live with normal non technical people. Pick your poison unfortunately. I will say it is behind a pi-hole.
I’ve been pretty shocked at the “non technical people” who just walk up to our Linux box TV setup, fire up Kodi, navigate the menus and start movies. 10 years ago that NEVER happened, today it’s not unusual. Even 15 years ago it was also common that all kinds of TV setups, including “normal” consumer gear, needed a one page “user’s guide” that a lot of people still couldn’t manage to make work.
Fair enough. I also recommend Apple when Linux isn’t an option
Go to any mid sized or larger company and run a port scan and you’ll be immediately found and taken to the woodshed or fired.
But I guess doing it unannounced in peoples home is just fine.What about the larger companies with LG tvs in their offices?
You wouldn’t add them to the network. HDMI to the conf room table or a dedicated phone controller. Maybe an HDMI matrix.
Forget the TV calling home for advertisement info, i’m worried about holes in their screen mirroring and microphone that would let people snoop from the floors above/below me. If we need smart features, we tie them to either real media hardware, or plug them to a small computer.
Media bullshit at work gets its own isolation VLAN.
If they were serious enough to buy serious equipment, I wouldn’t have to do it. I’d still do it, but I wouldn’t have to.
They literally run speech to text, store it and exfiltrate it to their servers…
Even if you deny internet access, it can hop to other smart devices of the same brand using hidden SSIDs and exfiltratr data that way, or if the TV gets sold and connected to a network, all of the stored conversations will get sent to their servers. This was from the original GN investigation and associated security researchers
There isn’t really something one can network-admin a way out of it seems, sadly…
is there any actual evidence of
it can hop to other smart devices of the same brand using hidden SSIDs and exfiltratr data that way,
because that’s a touch paranoid sounding
VLAN? Why would you let a monitor have a network connection? Grab the Mac address, and put it on a denylist so you don’t accidentally give it an IP address as part of your setup procedure.
smart boards, remote power off. I generally prefer (as I mentioned in other comments) to run them from PCs or an HDMI matrix, but I’ve had reasons to network-connect some here and there.
I wonder if I could desolder the WiFi chip
Someone at LG needs an ass whooping
No. They need life in prison. Hundreds of them.
My dad’s HP laptop started tripping a Honeypot on my network, now I gotta worry about LG as well…
I need to learn how to do this
God damn LG is really flaming all the way down to the ground aren’t they. Greed will make you do crazy shit.
Honestly, I’m surprised this isn’t common behaviour with all Smart TVs these days. It is trivial to probe a LAN network.
It is common, RTINGS did a video on it.
It is common behavior for a lot of consumer IoT devices. If it goes on your network and you don’t control the software, you should consider it compromised. Even if the manufacturer isn’t doing outright malicious stuff, it likely isn’t secured very well (they never are) so there’s every chance that someone else could find it and use it as a platform for malicious activity.
Only if you give it access
I have a dedicated IOT ssid and vlan (when my Orbi goes, I don’t know what I’ll replace it with…).
Each wifi node on that ssid is in client isolation mode and I carefully monitor where outbound traffic from that segment is headed.
It’s a lot of work, but it makes me feel slightly better about a thermostat, self-hosted security camera setup, and home assistant setup.
They used to have good TVs :( It’s a good thing I stay away from Smart TVs in general.
Exactly, I’m very disappointed. I bought and LG OLED in 2019, loved it for the image quality and smooth UI. It’s time for an upgrade soon, and I was thinking LG, but will probably have to go diff direction.
But go where though? Every single manufacturer is competing to see who can do the most anti-consumer bullshit and get away with it. They’ve been slowly boiling the frog for two decades now.
I’m holding onto the last of the good plasma tvs from Panasonic, Circa 2012. it’s a fantastic picture and no crap. Rs232 serial control for home assistant to turn it on and off.
I’m dreading the day it dies and I have to find the least shitty replacement
I found it to be a struggle to find a non-smart TV that was decent…
Aren’t all TVs non-smart if you do not connect it to the internet?
No they will still collect data that they can
But if they don’t ever get access to the internet, they can collect all the data they want? Unless they connect to nearby unsecured wifi and use that to connect to their server.
In the cases of the LG tvs, they will connect themselves to any open wifi in range, including the Xfinity/AT&T public wifi spots that are often enabled on people’s rented routers.
So if your neighbor, or the Starbuck’s on the corner has open wifi then that’s enough for your TV to send all your data to the mothership.
There were unsubstantiated rumours that:
- Samsung was connecting to open wifi
- Amazon’s wifi sharing was for this
- 5G was for this and these companies would add SIMs to the TVs.
None of those have been observed or proven though.
Good thing those ultra wide curved OLED monitors had horrible specs. I was waiting a year for them to release it and almost got one.
Everyday more and more shitty things coming from LG.
I really need to finish setting up an isolated network. The problem is I at least want to be able to cast to it.
That’s my thought on TVs that support casting (so it is probably a smart tv).
I have an old chromecast connected to my parents’ normal tv to avoid smart tvs and possible shenanigans
Dang I’ve had a LG TV for years. I must be an idiot.
Don’t worry, they all do it. You basically have to buy a dumb display if you want privacy.
I ran Wireshark to capture traffic from my LG C5 and the only “scanning” it did was SSDP. Did they post any written article with further information on what it’s doing? Most if not all of what was detailed in the video can be opted out of;
https://www.pocket-lint.com/i-stopped-my-lg-tv-from-spying-on-me-by-adjusting-these-settings/
Gamer Nexus, who uncovered this, has a 2 hour episode about it https://youtu.be/Q9uefFYe6bM
Why should we have to opt out of our devices spying on our LAN?
You shouldn’t have to opt-out of any of this, but if you own one and want to keep using it, I thought this would be helpful information.
Of course youre right, but we have to opt out of tracking at every level today. Thats the way we collectively allowed the goalpost to be moved.
Now, do they respect the opt out? Thats the real question
https://thecybersecguru.com/news/lg-smart-tv-spying-investigation/
There are roughly 216 million LG smart TVs in homes, hospitals, offices, and hotels worldwide. Each one maps its local network, fingerprints its content, and logs audio, on or off, whether you’re talking to it or to someone else, whether you’re online or not, and feeds that into an ad engine that sells access to your living room.
They do a lot more than just scan the network.
I love how this is showing you an ad for a LG tv at the end of the article. Priceless.
Goldstar - do like their oled technology, but hard pass on general quality and durability
It time to mine more value out of customer.
