> ACR uses audio fingerprinting technology using the TV’s internal audio processor (not a speaker) to identify content and does not collect screenshots, screen recordings, video recordings, voice recordings, or other audio recordings from the TV.

So they are claiming that ACR is done entirely through audio processing, and no visual data from the screen itself is used? That...doesn't seem plausible.

This paper from 2024 investigated both Samsung and LG and found that they both capture screen images for ACR, and send the resulting hash (not the raw content) back to the manufacturer for identification.

https://arxiv.org/html/2409.06203v1

We're going to have to get saavy in pulling apart the distinction between "I look at everything and then send a nice summary back to my manufacturer" and "I send everything back to my manufacturer". As AI gets cheaper and more efficient, it'll be baked into everything, and will distill signal at the edge and send the good bits back to central command. I fear the legalese in the ToS will obscure this new way of "not collecting" user information.

It's probably easier to do and every bit as accurate as just using a screenshot.

And it's still exactly what I don't want them doing. There's literally zero reason for LG to be building an advertising profile on me because I was foolish enough to buy one of their TVs. This isn't something that makes their products better, it's spying.

Here's how it's been done in the past

https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work

Audio is a bit easier to turn into a fingerprint for identification vs video. Video has a lot of smaller subtle changes that happen from things like compression which make it a lot harder to identify. It's why youtube still hasn't figured out piracy, but they'll knock you immediately if you play 5 seconds of copyrighted music.

When I buy something from the store, my relationship is between me and the store, for the 30 seconds it takes for me to pay for it. I don't want an ongoing relationship with the device manufacturer. I don't want to be tethered in any way to the manufacturer. I don't want to have an account with the manufacturer. I don't want the device sending anything to the manufacturer, advertising related, telemetry, or even a single bit "user has used your product." Do you get it, manufacturers?? I don't want any kind of relationship with you! I want to purchase my product and use it by myself not with you.

I think it depends on the device. If I buy an iPhone, I have the expectation of installing apps on it after purchase, and that necessarily involves a relationship with the app store provider (ie. Apple), not the store I bought the phone from.

With a TV, I suppose it depends on whether I want to install media apps like Prime Video or Netflix on it. I understand that there will be people who don't want that, in which case I agree with you. But others want to be able to run this stuff somehow, whether it's directly on the TV or via some HDMI device like a Chromecast or a Fire Stick. At that point, they _do_ want a relationship with some hardware manufacturer so that the third party app can be delivered to run on the hardware.

This is only true because Apple dictates it to be so. The manufacturer of the device should not have a say in what I choose to do with a device I bought. I should be able to install software on a device without asking the manufacturer for permission. Why do they think they should have an opinion? After I purchase the device, it's mine, not theirs. I can throw it off a cliff if I want without asking for Apple's permission, why can't I install software on it?

> At that point, they _do_ want a relationship with some hardware manufacturer so that the third party app can be delivered to run on the hardware.

The device manufacturer should not need to be involved with a user's decision to install software. There should not be this requirement to have a relationship with them. We should never have allowed this idea to be normalized that the device manufacturer needs to be somehow have a say, let alone be the sole path to using the device.

Device manufacturers should sell devices and then get out of the way of what the user is doing with those devices.

Also, if someone provides a service (e.g. Netflix) that some might want to use and some might not, then you have the option to use that service might be helpful but even that should not require any relationship with the manufacturer unless they are also providing the service. If the manufacturer is separate then they should not have anything to do with it (e.g. they should not add a button on the remote control specific for Netflix; if they have user programmable buttons that you can add your own labels, then it would be possible to use such a thing like that if the end user decides to install Netflix). (There are other problems with Netflix too but I am ignoring them for now because that would be a separate discussion.)

(When I buy a pocket supercomputer, I have that same exact expectation. It's often left unsatisfied, but I still have it.)

Truly though, smart-home stuff runs the whole gamut of privacy and device manufacturer relationships. eg: I have used three different smart/room AC units:

- one requires its own cloud-enabled app for any remote connectivity, no HomeKit integration - one integrates with HomeKit but then leaves an upgrade hint that can only be done through an app with a login - one integrates with HomeKit and pretty much just works

HomeKit then allows me to remotely control via HomePod/AppleTV acting as a router ... of course this is just a different cloud connectivity but with on-premises devices controlling other on-premises devices.

For each manufacturer of smart devices, there is potentially a separate cloud where data is being funneled through. Some devices support multiple upstreams.

I get that Matter should be a way to fix it but the reality feels more like https://xkcd.com/927/

Part of me just wants dumb devices back. Get rid of buttons on a microwave (just give me a knob for time and maybe another knob for power setting.) Remove touchscreens from cars (mine glares at me with certain sun-angles.) Bring back the desktop/computer hutch and phones that don't live in your pocket. However, having the ability to start cooling my bedroom 45 minutes before I arrive home is ... pretty compelling too.

When I'm sitting in my home and I want to turn off the AC unit in the other room or close my garage door, there's no reason I should have to do an IP roundtrip to the manufacturer's server. Both devices are on my LAN. They should just talk to each other. This has been a solved problem for decades.

(I know this doesn't change what Vizio did, but it might get your perfect device back)

Something you can just scan a QR code with your phone and it hooks it into your backups so your "cloud backup" is sitting in your utility room at home instead of being "someone elses computer"

Obviously this is all achievable by a savvy techie, but I'm thinking along the lines of a black box any idiot can use.

The idea is very appealing to me, I would love to decentralize "the cloud" for your average person.

And if it were possible to get one of these in every house and apartment, then the idea of a "smart home" starts to really click in ways it doesn't right now. Your smart home would have a "home cloud" box that acts as the brain

Idk. I think there's a product idea here somewhere but ultimately it's just something I'm kicking around now and then.

Your average ‘idiot’ can barely get a managed App to work, and that typically requires some kind of cloud endpoint to co-ordinate.

Other stuff is the land of prosumer.

I feel like the world is bossed by people who read (well, ok listened to a 5 minute summary on a grindlife podcast at 1.5x speed) about the Trojan Horse and thought they smelled a business opporunity.

Unless the piracy is silent, surely audio fingerprinting would catch it?

Audio is much easier to fingerprint and match against content.

Eventually, a digital signal needs to be converted into pixels on a screen. Once that happens, it's trivial to also pipe those pixels into a screenshot.

It's the reason DRM for digital media is pretty dumb IMO. The most sophisticated DRM still has to be decoded at some point for the end user to enjoy it. It can always be broken with a camcorder (though quality suffers). However, there exists devices which decode the HDMI signal so doing a pure digital signals.

Wrong. They claim it doesn't record video. Recording means saving permanently - live processing is not recording. ACR is processing the video output live.

Notice what they don't say at all. ACR is just one type of spying. A completely separate feature records what you say from the microphone. They only claimed ACR doesn't do that, which we knew. They did not claim the TV doesn't do that.

This is a carefully crafted PR statement, to avoid saying any lies while making it sound like the accusation was wrong, but it does not actually say the accusation was wrong. We can infer that the likely reason it doesn't say the accusation was wrong is that the accusation is right. Instead, it says several other things, which sound like they are refuting the accusation but are actually refuting other things that nobody said.

And specifically, they are not confirming or denying that video fingerprinting are done.

What I think is likely is, as the paper states, that they fingerprint both audio and video. Upload both to their servers. But they end up using only the audio fingerprint for ACR. In this situation, neither LG's statement, nor the paper's statement, nor the GamerNexus folks's claims are incompatible with each other.

It even makes sense from a technical standpoint: it is far easier to uniquely identify content by audio than by video, as a fingerprint of a few milliseconds of audio is pretty darn ideal, compared to fingerprinting even a single video frame which has hundreds of ways it could be compressed depending on codecs, bitrate, resolution, etc.

At that time during testing Cognitive could literally see what we were playing on our TV (not full video but the frames used for fingerprinting)

They don’t use Cognitive anymore for obvious reasons and there are several audio based ACR solutions but they always had issues with sections of video without much audio to work off of so we’re always considered inferior. They are fine for usage data however.

Anyway my $0.02

It apparently is.

Do you know the Nielsen Ratings? That's exactly how they know what people are watching these days. I've been contacted by them to be one of their subjects. They ship you a device that listens and recognizes based on content. They look for certain "fingerprints" in the audio and match against that - it's not capable of recording our conversations, etc (or so they claimed).

I participated once or twice a good number of years ago, and it was kind of a pain: It involved keeping a paper ledger of what was watched, and when. Correspondence was all handled by regular mail.

(As I recall, they included a small amount of cash ~every time they sent more correspondence and this was a primary motivator to keep going with it.)

Streaming services watermark the video as opposed to the audio as I understand it.

But that's for tracing pirated content back to the originating user account. It's not particularly useful (also entirely unnecessary and overly complicated) if your goal is to ID a piece of content as opposed to an account.

That can't recognize what you say. But, it can ID where you are in a specific show out of zillions of hours of shows.

A quick search for “audio steganography” should answer your question (and be a fun rabbit hole if you find that sort of topic interesting)

If you explained how the box was hooked up, it would be easier to judge whether there was a chance you were correct.

As it is, your description isn’t even clear whether or not the box contains a microphone.

(your car infotainment also likely has nielsen tech in it most likely, as they bought arbitron and gracenote)

It's been done for at least good 15 years.

When Nielsen first started collecting data (1950s), they handed out diaries to a group of around 5 000 selected households. Nielsen would then collect these diaries and extrapolate viewing patterns across the entire population.

After that came phone surveys. Next step (1980s) was the "people meter", a small box attached to the TV that could automatically detect which channel was tuned and which household members were in the room.

In the 1990s the set-top box made all of that redundant as the cable and satellite providers could directly see which channel every single box was tuned to at all times.

Both audio (sports) and video (netflix et al) watermarks are alive and well. They are used to trace piracy (ie account ID), not for content ID (at least AFAIK).

Poor Farnsworth. He just wanted edutainment, man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Encoded_Invisible_Light

What we watch is not OK to be fed ads, especially if I wasn't using their service to being with and its monitoring the audio from any input to do this.

In this way, smart tvs and smart home devices are effectively hostile devices behind your router at home.

Apple TV, Android TV or other devices are perfectly capable and better integrate with mobile and other devices in your network.

The tradeoff consumers are sold is trading convenience of in device apps for security.

Smart home devices like TVs, and thermostats should be treated as default hostile and isolated on a guest wireless network instead of your main one.

I've been trying to learn how to secure LG TVs, and saw that some people do seem to jailbreak them withan open version of webOS.

It’d be wonderful if we had a grapheneos equivalent for tvs. They’re very capable Android devices. Such a pity “we don’t own the glass”.

To me, this is really an admission.

- ACR uses audio fingerprinting

- ACR does not collect screen recordings

Both can be true if the TV hashes the frames locally and ACR “collects” the hashes.

I could probably come up with a use for that, but it's about as likely as coming up with a plan for one of the Raspberry Pi Zero Ws that are sitting in the drawer.

In what way? Dramatically lower processing and signature complexity. Audio signature matching is trivial and extremely well known. I see absolutely nothing implausible about this, and it seems a robust, viable solution.

> This paper from 2024 investigated both Samsung and LG and found that they both capture screen images for ACR, and send the resulting hash (not the raw content) back to the manufacturer for identification.

That paper found no such thing. That paper actually demonstrated that they have no clue how the ACR happened, they just demonstrated that playing content yielded content IDs. It is more likely they were witnessing audio ACR happening, exactly as LG described.

Spying on people without explicit consent (in a situation where you can say no without penalty) is the issue.

so they aren't even denying listening in on everything?

They still claim to get your media's audio, but deny using the microphones.

[0] https://www.lg.com/us/terms

1. The introduction says that Smart TVs are not included in this ToS ("not including Smart TVs").

2. Where do the terms say anything about "sensitive" content? The closest thing I see is section 4.d, but that's just about wiretapping/privacy laws in general.

Other people have mentioned there's other voice features like diction/voice control, so it's plausibly for that.

> In the real world, the selling data bit, ACR, and so on, is absolutely tiny dollars business. TVs are cheap because massive factories are pumping out these almost entirely plastic products in enormous numbers, and they're extremely cheap to make, and the IP has all been long amortized out.

Unfortunately that part if your comment is provably false in at least one instance: Vizio. It's a shame, I thought we were on the same page about spreading half truths.

Vizio's numbers are famously public due to its recent sale. We know they lost money on most televisions sold (not all!), and they made it up in ad revenue and content distribution from those TVs. It doesn't prove that LG loses money on its TVs, but it's clearly not as clear cut as you make it out to be.

Vizio's numbers were public because they went public in 2021 and like every public corporation they have to report numbers. The sale to Walmart actually made their numbers private again because while they're a part of public company still, it's now thoroughly washed in such a mass of numbers it disappears in any quantifiable way.

> It doesn't prove that LG loses money on its TVs, but it's clearly not as clear cut as you make it out to be

How clear cut do you think I made it? You seem to be claiming my comment said something it didn't.

TVs are being subsidized by secondary businesses for some vendors, to some degree, but that isn't why TVs are cheap. If you completely removed that factor, some makers would be slightly more expensive...but not by that much at all.

Like people do a lot of clever positioning to grossly overstate how much they make from this. And it's worth noting that much if not most of the revenue people ascribe to "ads" or privacy invasion on Vizio, actually came from their Connected+ platform. Vizio had a platform, just like Apple does, and just like Apple they took a cut of every subscription signed up for, or piece of media purchased.

I remember back in the day when laptops had a bunch of pre-installed junk and stupid stickers all over them -- at least in the Windows world -- and people would claim this "subsidized" the laptop. That it made it much less expensive. Some people ran the numbers and it was utterly marginal, but they did it because the average person simply didn't care. If they just increased the price the tiny amount and removed that shit the product would be better, but if most people don't care and you can eek out a tiny bit more, they do it.

What is anonymous: we record all the hashs from all the programs people are watching to identify people watching the same thing.

What is not anonymous: we hash all the content in the world, along with hashing the content people are watching, and reconstruct what they watched.

We probably shouldn't: doing any of this horseshit is a good reason to return a product. We should start doing that en mass until they get the idea.

The majority of the problem is also simply the ability to record. Putting a remote control listening hardware on a device that runs a plethora of 3rd party apps and with full connection to the internet means that even if LG isn't controlling that mic, someone else will be.

Here’s some examples:

- We don’t record continuously -> We record nearly all the time, only stopping to upload the recording.

- We do not sell your data -> But we do “share” it.

- All your data is protected from unauthorized LLM scraping -> But we define all the big tech companies as authorized scraping.

No. Stop minimizing their abuse.

> If no wake word is detected, the audio is processed locally, promptly deleted, and is not transmitted to LG servers.

This statement could still be true when:

* The audio transmission is to non-LG servers (e.g., Alphonso).

* The audio isn't transmitted, but the text transcription is.

How many other household devices have a microphone whose primary function is orthogonal to recording audio?

Microphones in tvs are a useful accessibility feature when they enable voice commands for the user, and allow them to be used as voice assistants.

They also enable tvs with a camera and microphone to be used as video calling or audio calling interfaces. Used well we get star Trek view screens, used poorly we get little brother monitoring.

For those interested, it turns the tv into an interactive terminal for voice and camera powered video games, which are becoming more popular.

Unfortunately advertising and tracking incentives drive the abuse cases to the top and will crush the positive use cases :(

Fully solve it by disconnecting network cable/Wi-Fi so there's no internet.

For me a TV set only receives FTA signals and has connectors for local media/AV input. It ceases to be a TV set when it starts doing what my PCs and laptops do.

(Anonymity is the reason why FTA broadcasting is still so very important, by design it's only one-way — broadcaster to listener/viewer. Unfortunately smart TVs and the internet subvert anonymity by design.)

Typing out the show you're searching for with an awkward onscreen keyboard is a huge pain compared to just clicking a button and speaking.

HN users are very much in a bubble if it's surprising to learn consumers expect voice control functionality on a new TV.

Perhaps a few are unaware but most know. As I said in my post, some (like me) only want traditional FTA — and with it comes anonymity by default.

Smart TVs undermine and subvert the virtues of FDA services. It should be mandated that it's possible for modern smart TVs to switch to FTA-only mode if viewers so desire. Similarly, regulation should ensure that dumb TVs always be available for those who want them.

You can dismiss the lives experience of most humans over the history of humanity, but it won't win you any arguments.

I'm still not purchasing a television. The last thing I need is more screen time in my life.

Yeah, I suspect that it either isn't a big enough segment of the market to make the costs worth it, or they just haven't been caught. Given that it's pretty easy to add amazon sidewalk connectivity to devices with bluetooth radios (which most of these TVs have to support external wireless speakers), I'd be shocked if they hadn't at least experimented and estimated payoff on doing that.

It's pretty straightforward to get dumb behavior out of a modern smart TV as long as you're satisfied with the factory installed firmware version.

Why wouldn't one be? Not that long ago 'dumb' TVs never even had firmware (and that was the situation throughout most of television history). Allowing a manufacturer to update TV firmware online is dangerous and foolhardy. (Same reasons why I never let any of my printers go anywhere near the internet—any driver software is always blocked by a firewall.)

Made nearly moot by the presence of microphones in most (all?) modern remotes.

I say nearly moot because its worth noting the ability to operate a physical remote may itself be prohibitive to some.

So in effect, there are a multitude microphones in a modern LG environment.

Edit: also the mic in the remote has a function to calibrate the speakers to the room (correcting for the impulse response of the room basically) which can make the audio much better.

That seems unwise, no matter how helpful the features are.

IIRC I saw already Bruce Schneider's blog some team proof of concept where they listened using laptop speakers what was spoken in that room. Audio quality wasn't perfect, but it making sense what was spoken was good enough.

Users need to know the electrical features of their H/W and its limits. If a loudspeaker output stage is designed (hardware wired) so that it can never act as an input then no later firmware update can turn the speaker into a microphone.

This is why hardware authentication is becoming more and more important.

limits

The warning has been there for 80 years and still most are unaware. When Vespasian built the Colosseum it was to help rule over the unruly. Netflix and ilk are its modern incarnation.

Some "smart" TVs could do skype in the past, I'm not sure if they needed external headsets of worked with builtin mikes.

Exactly, and recent announcements like Apple normalising always on recording, even wrapped in “big promises” on privacy, deserve a lot more attention and strong regulation.

They may be optional features but I’m pretty sure when I set up my tv and got to the screen where you are required to agree to the various terms and privacy legalese the “happy path” was to hit the “accept all” button vs use the remote to navigate into each one, read, and only activate the few required to use the tv. I would not call this dark pattern “optional” by default.

LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49612329 - Sept 2026 (359 comments)

GamersNexus and LG: Or why rooting your TV is a bad idea - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605424 - Sept 2026 (133 comments)

A Screensaver for LG's Spying Smart TVs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605356 - Sept 2026 (13 comments)

LG TVs aren't the only ones spying on you [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49575176 - Sept 2026 (18 comments)

LG Smart TVs logging USB filenames and viewing info to LG servers https://doctorbeet.blogspot.com/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging...

HackerNews discussion (178 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759426

The vast majority of consumers are not going to spend another $100-300 on a media player device like an Apple TV, Roku, or nVidia shield. They will use the built in app functionality.

And even those who don't - a very surprising to me number people use the "free channels" most TVs ship with. It's like the streaming version of broadcast OTA I guess for a certain consumer segment.

Their statements don’t align with the reality I’ve experienced as a customer. My TV is not connected to the network, because the setup process left me with 0 trust that LG wouldn’t be collecting information regardless of my settings, or that I didn’t miss something. There was also the risk that they’d add a new “feature” with an update which would I’d be automatically opted in to.

Until they start selling truly dumb TVs, I’m not going to trust anything and their statements fall flat.

Opt-in used to mean that it was disabled until you explicitly click somewhere to enable it.

Opt-in: take action to have the feature.

Opt-out: take action to not have the feature.

> ACR is an optional feature that is turned off by default. To enable ACR, a user must accept LG’s Viewing Information Agreement, which describes how ACR works.

Which I take to mean that when you agree to the terms, it enables the feature.

  Now, our lawyers have made the totally unrelated point uh that we cannot legally agree to contracts such as terms of service or conditions while incredibly innebriated.

Take that LG legal dept.

see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA&t=358s

The only alternative would be to not accept the agreement and return the TV to the store, because there would be no way to go through the setup and actually use the TV.

I can't remember if this agreement was forced during the last setup I did, but most of these agreements are forced. There is no way to not check a box and still use the device with the desired featured turned off out of the gate.

Maybe they technically have it opt-out, but from a user perspective, that's not the experience. This is a dark pattern and their framing around this solidifies that I will never buy another LG product.

Anyway, last year my phone died and I bought a new one made by Samsung. I had to opt out of collection like 4 or 5 times with confusing buttons, and there is a lot of crapware installed by default, and then the phone offered to install two additional apps. I almost sure I said no, but one of them got installed anyway.

LG adopted the "Maybe Later" dark pattern for opt-in to ACR, at least in some markets. Though I guess you never know for sure with A/B testing.

> LG went on to say that beyond the aforementioned instances, "the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations."

LG is contradicting themselves here. In order to detect a wake word then they must be collecting or recording ambient conversations.

I think the main questions are:

1. Is it fully supported to use LG TVs disconnected from the internet.

2. Are wake word voice controls and ACR truly opt-in. They claim it is in the statement but (as others have mentioned) I remain skeptical what definition of “opt-in” they are using.

Update: some of this is becoming a semantic discussion on the definitions of “recording” and “collecting”, but to circumvent this I would say:

If a device can detect words in my ambient conversations and depending on what it detects (accurate or not) it can send that audio to the cloud, I would describe that device as “collecting or recording ambient conversations”

I don't know how LG TVs do it, but e.g. many smartphones use a dedicated ASIC/audio processing chip that does not really record anything, but specifically listens for the wake word and discards all other audio to save power/battery life. I think this distinction is relevant, because there is a huge privacy difference between streaming a live audio stream to the cloud to detect a wake word and a specialized audio processor that has a small buffer only for detecting the wake word, where the audio does not leave that processor.

Theoretically, you could call that few-second buffer recording, but I don't think that would be collecting/recording ambient conversations to most people, since it's ephemeral and does not leave your device.

The question, of course, is what happens in LG TVs.

No, it's arguably accurate because "record" implies it's being persisted. Otherwise something as simple as a sound meter (which needs a microphone to operate) is "recording".

There's a risk here that we will talk-past one another while using different meanings of the same words, so let me offer a scenario:

AcmeTV has an isolated component which taps microphone input, records to a 5-second ring buffer, and on "Wakey-Wakey" triggers an alert flag. Assume it works perfectly accurately.

Would you accuse AcmeTV of "recording or collecting ambient conversations" on the basis of that component constantly reading microphone data?

Personally I wouldn't, because it's not the same kind of "recording" we consumers are concerned about.

Well this is a silly assumption. Wake word false positives happen all the time. (“No Siri, I wasn’t talking to you…”)

The point is that ethical implementations do exist, and them working does not rely on anything close to perfection--so nitpicking that word isn't helpful.

Nearby, another AcmeTV or business partner device picks up the sound and sends it to AcmeHQ.

The former device "never transmits your viewing behavior to Acme". The latter device "never records your viewing behavior".

Or, in a heavily-paraphrased nutshell:

    Politician: "Watch-words are ALWAYS evil-mode. They have to be lying."
    Terr:       "No. Here's a watch-word which would be good-mode."
    Politician: "Well, it'll still *become* evil-mode, eventually."

Which actually makes it easier for a future EvilTVCorp to get away with recording your conversations 24/7 in MP3 files sent to their server if cynical consumers assume every TV records you anyway, so what's the difference?

Then, when the system was more awake, it would attempt to figure out whether the wakeword was real or not (e.g. sometimes certain words and word pairs have a very similar sonic signature to 'Alexa'), and if it felt confident enough then it would begin streaming audio to the back end for significantly improved voice recognition.

Since Amazon took (and as far as I know still takes) voice privacy incredibly seriously, voice recordings and data were treated as essentially radioactive waste, deleted as soon as legally possible, and secured against even internal Alexa developer access.

I personally don't have the same level of confidence in security with LG, who seem to think they don't have as much to lose as far as customer trust goes and might as well exploit the heck out of the systems they have. I suspect that problem, which Amazon has so far pretty successfully avoided for the most part, is self-correcting over time.

lol no https://apnews.com/article/amazon-privacy-echo-7fb3c19fa7f66...

> When I worked for Alexa

Look I know it's easy to believe these things when your paycheck depends upon it, god knows I've convinced myself of a convenient fact or two when it was necessary for me to get through the day. But afterwards, without a financial interest, you owe it to yourself to go back and think about it again.

Is this what is done with the "Audio was not intended for this device" entries in the Review Alexa History section of the Alexa app?

Fuck that. Dystopian shit with people yelling brand names in their homes.

Edit: I forgot people already be yelling Alexa/Siri/Google. I can't imagine a future when you have to yell to each brand in your home. "Hey Sony, turn on the PS7. LG what's on the fridge? Samsung, start the cycle in the dishwasher".

https://youtu.be/ToP9xfLDSME

New iPhones are expensive, more than $1000. Yet most people who get them finance it through their cellular carrier, usually 2 year plans, so it's just $30-$50 tacked on to the monthly cellphone bill. So ... no one cares unless it's going to double their bill.

Let's say the RAMopocalypse and other AI-driven chip pressues drives everything up even more; let's say now-cheap TVs are now $2000 or $3000. No biggie. Your cellphone company can offer you an eSIM-locked TV with bundled network and services, on a 5 year plan with free lifetime service and replacement, adding just $30-$40 to your bill for 5 years. Maybe it will include something like Family Tracker Life360 Intercom as a value-add - talk to your children to/from the TV to/from any phone on your plan, anywhere, anytime. Safety, etc.

Same thing with your laptop, home IoT/security devices, etc.

If ATSC 3.0 dies and gives way to 5g Broadcast, it'll be another enabler for something like this.

That's when the real lock-in will happen.

[0] https://weowntheglass.com

With out the user the content would have never been created. Users are the content creates and now the push to remove their owners ship of their actions and move it to the wealthy.

Greed begets more greed.

Sure, to use the TV you need to go past the EULA screen. And the button right in front of you, pre-selected - is agree to all terms. And after pressing OK, you now have ACR turned on. But you did that, it wasn't on by default.

Okay I can take my soul sucking corporate hat off now.

Its looks like the sort of stuff that happens to a tragic fantasy hero after a Faustian deal. Except they would've asked for riches, love or eternal youth, we on the other hand just want our middling-quality tv to work.

And that's where the problem is.

TVs should be TVs. Phones should be phones. Cars should be cars. If the manufacturers can't help themselves adding other stuff that is for their own benefit and not the product owner's and some of it so bad that it needs legal weasel words to CTA and competition in the market is insufficient to kill these practices off then it's time for heavy-handed regulation.

Maybe we say you can't sell any product in these categories in our country with any remote connectivity at all except for specifically permitted uses. Maybe the penalty for wilful violation is a warning with a big fine. Maybe the penalty for repeated wilful violation is fines that are an existential threat to the business and personally barring the corporate executives from holding corporate office for the next five years. That kind of thing.

Maybe the simplest solution is to pass a consumer protection law that completely nullifies any such post-sale agreements and makes pre-sale agreements enforceable only if they have massive prominence and standardised warnings on the packaging like the ones we require here in England on tobacco products. Then everyone can just use the regular tech security and privacy laws against any company that is spying on its customers or compromising their home networks without consent - which would probably be any company that operated this kind of scheme at all because I doubt many manufacturers would want to print "WARNING: USING THIS PRODUCT DAMAGES THE SECURITY AND PRIVACY OF YOUR HOME AND DEVICES" in six inch high lettering on their boxes.

It's okay to ASK for permissions afterwards, if user can decline. But if such permissions are required to use the device normally, then the proper course of action is decline, if product then fails to do its job, take it back to store as broken & demand money back (no, coupons won't do!). Any seller refusing at that point would have a hard time avoiding legal repercussions should you decide to pursue it.

That is: in countries with reasonable consumer protection laws (like EU).

They at least use a pattern where you need to accept terms of use & privacy policy when you download an app. Same screen has option to accept other agreements like ACR. However by default "select all" option is highlighted so people will often click that.

Slightly earlier on video they state that certain ad related things got turned on automatically during software updates.

That case sure put Mark Russinovich on everyone’s radars, at least.

Good times.

As the saying goes, this is what radicalized me. If any one of us did anything close to this we would be treated like Aaron Swartz and given a 35+ year prison sentence.

But in the Sony case the DOJ didn't even threaten criminal charges.

Also they provided a statement earlier to Gizmodo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628328

I am absolutely certain that ACR was enabled on our new TV by default, back some years ago. I am nearly certain their voice recognition, and advertising spying were enabled on our TV by default.

If none of this is truly "enabled by default" then this is a recent development.

I discovered this many years ago and did some deep dives, and unfortunately didn't publish anything about it. Lesson learned.

I really wish there was a better way to do a media center linux.

So, was realme transcribing all conversations and uploading it? Can someone answer?

For example, let's say an ad network knows your and your friends' location, and knows you've met because you've been close together frequently, or are using the same wifi network. You talk about perfumes, then later one of them looks up perfumes on their phone. Google would usually have access to this much metadata, and will likely serve you perfume ads because of your friend who later looked it up.

This doesn't directly answer your question though. The answer would be - it's possible, but a lot is possible without that.

[1] https://archive.is/OyuUO

It's more likely that this is all due to external forces. Having your device on the same network, in close enough proximity to detect each other, for instance, combined with one of your friends having Googled the stuff you were talking about.

Or just basic data collection. There's the classic story about how supermarkets know you're pregnant before you do, just based on the groceries you buy (no, not pregnancy tests). Ad networks buy and collect a humongous amount of information about everyone and serve ultra specific targeted ads based on nothing more than pattern matching based on what the rest of humanity is doing.

It's impossible to rule out that the thing did run a 24/7 TTS service, but I think the depressing fact that ad networks don't need to listen to our conversations to know what we're talking about is more probable.

And your phone most likely already listens all the time to catch an "Hey, Google" (or something similar).

For example, last week I was complaining to my spouse about shoulder pain and how I was afraid I may need another surgery. YouTube has suddenly starting flooding my feed with videos about "shoulder exercises to avoid surgery." I hadn't searched any of those terms, purchased anything or visited an orthopedic, so I don't know what else could possibly explain it.

That’s the next possibility to eliminate.

I am positive I get ads based on the interests of other people the wifi where I live.

Kentucky passed HB 692 unanimously requiring smart TVs to ask permission if they are going to be spying on us. Ask your state legislature to follow their lead and pass some very popular consumer privacy protection.

The definition of “process” is really important and is missing. LG could process all transcripts on their servers too and stay within a very wonky definition of “process” on the TV that excludes transcription and transmission.

Our approach is guided by four principles:

Transparency – Helping users understand how smart TV features work and how related data may be used.

User Choice – Giving users meaningful control over optional features and services.

Informed Consent – Supporting informed decisions through clear and manageable consent choices.

Continuous Improvement – Continuously improving privacy controls, transparency, and security protections.

--------------------

Transparency:

This document isn't terribly easy to understand by the standards of traditional TV's. You have to pay close attention to figure out what is and isn't going on, and when. It also should have been taped to the front of every LG TV when it comes out of the box.

User Choice:

There is extensive explanation of how what LG TV's are doing isn't nefarious, but the fact remains that there's no switch to turn it off. Why not just put a simple hardware on/off switch on these TV"s to turn off all connectivity? Maybe some users want dumb TV's, or maybe they just don't want to worry about all of this.

Informed Consent:

Buyers apparently consented to this at the store. Now you're finally informing them. That's now how informed consent works.

Continuous Improvement:

I'll believe LG and other Smart TV manufacturers are serious about this when they add a hardware wifi on/off switch, and not a moment before.

Instead, I connect a Google TV Streamer, as I'm in the Google ecosystem. For my friends in the Apple ecosystem, I tell them to do the same with an Apple TV box.

OLED productions costs have fallen, and the yields have gotten better — displays of all kinds have gotten cheaper, not just TVs; OLEDs have started showing up in products they haven’t before for cost reasons, etc.

The manufacturers make some profit on the data they harvest, sure; but the biggest BOM costs of TVs have definitely also dropped sharply.

Companies like Vizio make vastly more on the ads and data than they do on the tvs.

Some quarters they even take a loss. They took a $7m bath on hardware while booking about $120m on ads and data.

We’re never getting good tv’s back. It’s only going to get worse. Now they’re starting in on monitors.

The only lifeline would be consumer protection, which obviously won’t happen in the US.

Unless this stuff is made literally illegal they will keep doing it, because it's far more profitable than the alternatives. This is precisely why ideas like paying for a privacy respecting option on Facebook could never work.

LG are amongst equals here. I've seen devices (TVs/cameras) do ping sweeps and then port scans.

I have two VLANs at home: THINGS for IoT and SEWER for things that look really dodgy.

I drive a (Seic) MG4 EV. I use the Home Assistant integration for that and put up with the rest. To be fair I live in the UK and we are quite efficiently ... observed.

So the TV gets advertised as "$$$, but basically $$ if you sign up to be surveilled and get a $/month check back." If the company sets $/month too low--or is too creepy about what they collect--people just won't opt-in.

But what happens if they promise big pay-backs but routinely cancel from their side? That's a problem, but at least it's a kind the market [0] can handle when it comes to reputation and bad reviews.

[0] "Markets are good, use them." -- "OK, fine, you must price this on a market." -- "NOT LIKE THAT!"

Disconnecting “smart tv” from internet to use Apple TV is possible and might work, but you will get nagged to reconnect all the time. And TV mfr will eventually try to find workarounds - purchase access to wireless connections from large-footprint connectivity providers (Xfinity WIFI, 4g/5g networks, etc) or create a p2p network among their own connected devices. I doubt they do it right now as it’s less profitable to focus on niche audience, but eventually it might become profitable enough.

"Do not continuously record or transmit"

Soooo....

I still have an 1080p TV because I can't be arsed to do the research on what 4k TV won't spy on me.

It helps that most "content" isn't worth 4k anyway.

From their statement. This entire thing is contradictory. You cannot both say "not converted to text, stored, or transmitted", while at the same time saying the results may be generated and stored in the form of logs.

We need to hold companies responsible for this shit.

Trust broken, words out, and their statement doesn’t really do anything to mending that.

from: https://web.archive.org/web/20201201175708/http://blog.ptsec...

Highly efficient" is 25mW at 33MHz. According to the Wikipedia page, it can run even when the PC is off but plugged in or connected to battery. an ARM Cortex M0-4 will use even less power in idle. All it needs is a tiny capacitor and bootrom and a secret flash storage to record audio and upload it once internet becomes available

"The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer is turned off. This issue can be mitigated with the deployment of a hardware device which is able to disconnect all connections to mains power as well as all internal forms of energy storage. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and some security researchers have voiced concern that the Management Engine is a backdoor.

Intel's main competitor, AMD, has incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually all of its post-2013 CPUs."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

There are countless low or passive power audio devices since the Thing that can record and upload/bounce audio to receiveing devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

Go figure. People are strange.

And yes, that ME and PSP are on every cpu since I can't remember, Thinkpad T60 was probably one of the last ones without spy tech.

They noted the discovery traffic with Wireshark, and commented on LG boasting about how many connected devices their networks can see.

This remains to be a larger issue than the clear fact LG TVs can easily be used as remote spy devices, even when offline, by wirelessly remote connected agents.

This is probably obvious to most people, but I will mention just the same: do not install the antenna that the TV comes with.

Wifi antennas would typically be internal and unrelated to the one F-Type coaxial connector one would typically think of as the "antenna" input.

Can't really stop the internal module from scanning and connecting to open access points unless you control the software.

Exactly this. Search for a mini PC and it'll have a cheap Intel SoC in it that performs way better than a Raspberry Pi 5 but cheaper (comes with everything for ~$300), and even consumes a similar amount of power.

Every day I want to keep tech more fenced and far from me and only use it for what I need.

We should have laws that limit this kinda of “agreements”

It's insane that something you purchase can force a post purchase EULA before it can do anything.

Imagine buying a shirt but there's a 10 page EULA that says you agree to arbitration as soon as you break the seal. Or a blender, or an oven, or a refrigerator.

A lot of the "smart" electronics are in fact just that, they are sneaking in EULAs to use an app to connect to the device which robs you of your rights and protections as a consumer "Oh, the law says we have to give a 10 year warranty, but unfortunately you installed our app to work with your device which says you agree to forgo the warranty and pay us for the right to sue".

https://gdpr.eu/gdpr-consent-requirements/

The problem is the capacity to litigate is far surpassed by the world's speed and volume of doing bad.

This is a case where companies' actions should be treated like parking tickets: a fine is issued summarily, with option to appeal, not a slow process of litigation having to happen before a fine is issued.

LG is truly an adversial party in all of this.

It's a long video, and they cover more than one issue. Please explain what, in particular, you found was misleading.

What would be worthwhile is what is actually sent. The breathless reporting on it suggests it scans your network, I’ve never seen anything in my router logs to show any kind of port scan or even arp scan.

The only thing that’s seem to be a problem is the ages old adtech which the tech industry tends to be quite happy with as it pts so much of the bills for so many companies

It’s basically stealing.

Would you want some device connecting to your network that is not under your control?

And before you answer “well, you should lock it down,” yes, that’s true, but we do not blame the victim if they fail to do so. An unlocked door is not an invitation.

A TV not on the Internet is basically worthless these days, unless you have a third-party streaming device like a Fire or Shield--and then you're just moving the trust point from the TV itself to the streaming device, and the same concerns exist. Do you trust Amazon any more than you trust LG?

That's exactly the sort of thing I could see LG piggy backing on. Your neighbor might have spectrum so the LG TV connects to it's private network to phone home.

If you live in a dense city, there's a good chance you can reach an open network. When I lived in midtown Manhattan, there were around 500 SSIDs reachable from my apartment.

We use a Kubuntu Linux laptop behind the TV with a wireless mouse and keyboard (for searching and stuff), stream in Chrome, works great. And yes, we trust this combination.

> Do you trust Amazon any more than you trust LG?

We don't use Amazon device products just because we use Kubuntu Linux on PC's in our home but yes based on LG's behavior we trust Amazon more and we don't put our LG TV or any of our LG appliances we bought a few years ago, on the Internet.

Forgot to mention - there were no improvements whatsoever in terms of functionality.

It should be Tom's Hardware thing to releal this type of a scam.

They also specify "for advertising purposes" in the response. It's pretty selective in that wording because it implies that it may be used for other purposes.

The only way these companies get put in their place is if their products are used to exfiltrate the video or audio of a powerful politician doing something compromising.

Here in Australia cops liked to hide behind bushes at the bottom of a hill with a speed camera / radar as a revenue collection exercise. They kept fining politicians speeding between Sydney and Canberra, and used photos as evidence showing said politicians with women other than their wives in the passenger seats. So the rules were changed so every speed camera needs at least three warning signs before you reach it.

Yeah, it’s naked self interest but it’s the only way things get done in the world.

Someone, perhaps a white hat hacker, needs to start hacking into LG TVs and publishing senators’ wives screaming the name of “the help” in ecstasy while the man of the house is in DC. Or post audio of senators accepting bribes. Whatever, use your imagination!

Suddenly, almost miraculously, privacy will matter, LG executives will be dragged over hot coals, some might even go to federal prison over wire tapping or espionage charges. Same as Huawei.

But my mark words, until a Senator feels burning hot shame over something exfiltrated from their TV, exactly zero changes will happen to consumer protection laws.

LG will do damage control for a few days.

By next week you will all forget this.

Nothing will change.

https://youtu.be/krj5NM-6tfU

They made customers feel like suckers for trusting the Brand.

Their LG logo was literally on the signed evidence. What a bunch of clowns getting exposed by community reporters. Thanks Steve. =3

What is that? And why does it only happen on that website?

Connect your own devices and smarts to it.

A broader issue is that it does any kind of recording, or processing of the signals around the tv (from a microphone) or what is displayed on the tv (image) is both extremely private.

Privacy has been violated by LG according to their own wording. a way that is not controlled by settings.

What might LG want with an anonymized hash of the audio being played or shown on someone's screen?

Existing ad matching technology can link it with the video of what you're watching to build a shadow profile of you and then sell the attention of your eyeballs to advertising.

From there, simply what you watch, at what time, for how long roughly sets up a wonderful demographic of age, gender, interests, and all that fun stuff. This is an area of tv and video advertisign that has existed for a long time including online and cable tv boxes.

LG's statement that it doesn't move your info anywhere about what is being watched via audio seems to be a variant of this. Using the audio fingerprint, their software could request an ad for it from another system and direction.

So your information may not leave the TV indirectly, but thsi type of a mechanism does exist in cable tv boxes, etc.

With TVs absorbing the OTT (set top box) functions they are absorbing this too so their claims of how big their market is probably tied to being able to sell advertising into that ecosystem.

It’s likely an unadvertised function only for the benefit and leverage of LG and may be buried in signing your life away to use their “smart” tv functions as well.

A tiny crack in LG tvs can be an attack vector for security and safety. Whether it's audio, or video, or anything.

The best TV is a dumb tv, with all internet disabled and plug in your own smarts that you can hopefully manage better.

A brand is a promise of an experience. This brand has broken a promise and it can’t be pretending it didn’t.

Yeah, they fucking *would*.

It doesn't matter whether they deny specific methods when their execs are quoted giving specific outcomes that require literal spying.

Fuck off LG, and the rest of you doing the same shit.

Maybe an answer is a stripped-down Linux distro for smart TV chipsets that let users clearly disable said features entirely? Since I doubt anyone is going to willingly "go back" to dumb displays when so much data and ad revenue is on the line.

I think this is all disingenuous and will stay that way until the public asks the right questions to the right people

the CEO of the obvious organization can go in front of Congress and truthfully say “Senator, we are not listening, targeting is based on browsing patterns and data brokers”

while the targeted ads and timelines remain based on all those other inputs, and also audio