An independent investigation costing $70,000 and spanning up to 500 hours of testing has exposed deep data collection practices in LG smart TVs. Teams from Gamers Nexus and Level1Techs demonstrated that these smart televisions scan users’ home Wi-Fi networks and continuously record audio even when the screen is powered down.
LG TVs utilize the UPnP protocol to map out surrounding electronic devices. Smartphones, laptops, and other smart hardware connected to the same Wi-Fi router are automatically indexed by the TV system.
Secondary Microphone Through Walls
The most striking finding from the testing was the presence of a hidden secondary microphone. This component remains active and captures room conversations from distances up to 18 meters, boasting enough sensitivity to pick up audio through walls. The recording persists continuously even after the owner disables the primary microphone in the settings menu.
If the internet connection drops, the device does not stop operating. The television converts speech recordings into text and saves them to local storage. As soon as network connectivity is restored, the queued text data is immediately uploaded to servers.
The microphone does not power off immediately once a room falls silent. The recording mechanism remains active for 10 to 15 seconds after a user stops speaking. This technical evidence contradicts LG’s official denial in July, where the company claimed it does not record ambient conversations.
An Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) feature complements the setup by capturing image and audio samples. Visual data harvesting continues even when the television is used strictly as a passive HDMI monitor connected to a laptop.
webOS Apps Hijack Internet Connections
Cybersecurity firm Spur uncovered a parallel threat within the device’s application ecosystem. Approximately 42% of apps in LG’s webOS App Store were found to contain residential proxy code. This embedded code reroutes third-party internet traffic by piggybacking on the homeowner’s paid Wi-Fi network.
The TV’s built-in browser also harbors a Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability. Researchers proved that threat actors could exploit the system remotely through fake mobile pop-ups, taking complete control of the TV unit.
Facing the wave of findings from the early July 2026 report, LG responded with revisions to its legal terms. The company incorporated a mandatory arbitration clause into its 30,000-word user agreement to block consumers from filing class-action lawsuits.
That lengthy agreement now serves as a legal barrier for buyers seeking privacy protection, leaving homeowners bound to hardware that continuously operates as a two-way surveillance device.
Reported by Decrypt.
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