> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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).
nielsen's ACR method is embedded into millions of devices and vendors. No need for a microphone, it's processing the audio signal being sent out. A microphone would be a wasted conversion..
(your car infotainment also likely has nielsen tech in it most likely, as they bought arbitron and gracenote)
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.
After doing some investigation into my Bang Olufsen after some tech not working right apparently Dev mode on it allows "Most probable raw grab: ThinQ/SSAP on the LAN after pairing — ~960×540 JPEG. Live Plus/ACR: most probably sends a fingerprint, not a retrievable raw frame."
"Everything" would include the microphone, both in the remote and the TV. They're claiming to split off the audio, with one path going to the speakers (and there to your ears), and the other path being hashed (and from there to LG).
They still claim to get your media's audio, but deny using the microphones.
If they don’t use the microphones why do they have a statement in their Terms of Service to not say sensitive things in front of your TV? It says the TV owner is "solely responsible" for obtaining all necessary consents from third parties whose voices may be recorded by the device, and must warn household members and guests that their voices may be recorded, and if someone does not agree, the TV's microphone and voice functions need to be turned off. [0]
They explicitly state that the audio ACR is done through the "TV’s internal audio processor". e.g. rendered audio, not recorded audio. I mean, you could stretch the claim to have it internal include recorded audio, but that seems dubious.
Note that their statement could also be true if they record 99% of the time. We need to start calling companies out for meaningless weasel statements like "We don't record continuously".
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.
There are lots of good reasons that are used to paper over the abuse cases.
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 :(
> The majority of the problem is also simply the ability to record.
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.
> "LG TVs process voice data only when the voice button on the remote control is pressed and held, or when a wake word such as 'Hi LG' is recognized after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature."
> 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.
>LG is contradicting themselves here. In order to detect a wake word then they must be collecting or recording ambient conversations.
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".
> In order to detect a wake word then they must be collecting or recording ambient conversations.
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.
They say these features are opt-in and they reject dark patterns, but in my experience setting up LG TVs, everything was opt-in and I had to manually hunt through all the menus to turn this stuff off.
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.
I probably should have said "everything was already enabled"... Opt-in/out was on the mind, and neither seemed like the right wording to convey that the choice was already made for me in the wrong direction.... I was opted in automatically.
If the checkbox is already ticked it is called opt-out. You have to toggle the checkbox to not be activated. The other way around is opt-in. The checkbox is empty and if you want to enable it you have to take action.
Yesterday I saw a comment that say that some info collecting was "opt-in by default" and I imagined it was an evil conspiracy f corporations to dilute the name. I just looked for the comment, but it was just another case of error while writing the comment.
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.
"We own the glass" that's what really stood out to me. I can still disconnect my TV from wifi. But what scares me is when every device comes with their own esim and cellular radio.
When you buy a BIC pen, you own all content created with that pen, not BIC. This needs to be applied to all other tools; computers, TVs, AI agents, ...
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.
ACR is "not enabled by default"? Is this actually true or is it one of those weasley technicalities where the tv ships with it turned off, but once you connect the tv to the internet it turns on?
Technically when you turn the TV on for the first time, ACR is not enabled. Ergo, not enabled by default.
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.
Sure, to use the TV you need to go past the EULA screen.
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.
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.
Why don’t you read LG’s actual statement, which states that it “requires separate explicit user opt-in consent and can be disabled at any time through the TV settings.”
Remember that one time when music CDs from Sony MBG installed a rootkit on your PC that continuously sent whatever MP3s you had on your PC back to them?
Yep and they were fined a paltry 6 million dollars or so. For actively distributing and infecting users with malware. This on annual sales exceeding $3B.
That case sure put Mark Russinovich on everyone’s radars, at least.
> "LG also said that its features like “Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), voice recognition, and interest-based advertising are optional,” and “not enabled by default.”
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.
A few months ago, my Roku TV started displaying these weird popups, saying something like, "Looks like you're watching college basketball. Did you know Roku-TV also has college basketball?" - something like that. Well, for the Roku device, yes, there was a setting I could disable, but (1) Roku pushed this 'feature' and made it default without my knowledge/consent, and (2) the config setting says the popups will stop, but it doesn't mention the data collection; my assumption is they're still collecting that data for their own data analytics purposes.
Pretty much the exact reason I stopped using Roku. I bought a streaming device to stream, but apparently roku decided selling devices wasn't lucrative enough so they started selling ads instead.
I really wish there was a better way to do a media center linux.
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.
I've one question: I've used android phone (realme, which is chinese). And i remember that whenever we used to discuss somethings among our friends, i started used to get ads realated to that on my laptop, phone within atmost a hour.
So, was realme transcribing all conversations and uploading it? Can someone answer?
Wired wrote an article in 2017 [1] on whether it's possible/probable to do that. Technology has evolved a lot since then, so it's a lot more feasible, but the article describes how far metadata alone can go.
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.
You don't need monitoring for that to work. Just something like "Hey, Google". The device knows a bunch of keywords and when it hears them it's bingo. As long as your laptop and phone are logged into the same local network with the same public IP they'll get the same ads.
And your phone most likely already listens all the time to catch an "Hey, Google" (or something similar).
I don't know, but I suspect the battery drain would be substantial. I wonder if there is a different explanation: maybe one of your friends searched for information on the topic while you were on the same hotspot/in the same location and that (along with existing relationship graphs?) allowed them to target you? That's how I'd do it, I think.
There is a real possibility that either something you saw triggered the conversation and/or that you remember the ad because you spoke about it. It’s enough to linger on an ad for the platform to recognize your interest and serve you more ads like it.
People always dismiss this as FUD but it's been happening to me more than ever. I know in many cases it is more likely that firms are acquiring purchase histories and location data but that doesn't explain other incidents.
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.
It could have been something as simple as lingering on some kind of content related to physical therapy on a social media feed before scrolling past it, or maybe your wife googled it and it got correlated via network?
I think the disappointing reality is that those ad networks have enough access to the content of your attention (and therefore what you talk to your friends about) that the technical cost and risk of surreptitious audio monitoring just isn't necessary.
If you live in the United States you should find out who your state senator and representative are and write a letter to them asking them to propose, and support legislation prohibiting spying and increasing consumer privacy protection.
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 only reason TV’s are getting cheaper is the business model changed. Now your viewing data (and perhaps conversations) are part of their product offering.
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.
It's probably mixed. I think Vizio's financial statements suggest they lose money on TVs and make it up on user data, but I'm not sure this holds for other manufacturers. I agree with you that TVs have gotten much cheaper to make, which probably incentivized the "collect it all" mentality, since their reach has increased and they can target more customers with lower prices.
When they spend 400 on a tv and sell it for 410 and sell the data for 40 it doesn’t mean the data makes 4 times as much as the tv. The cost of gathering that data is still 400, they have nothing to sell without spending 409 in the hardware.
I don't need the TV to be cheaper. I can afford to make up the difference for whatever few hundred dollars extra they would earn selling my data. But the expensive ones do this stuff, too.
So what you're saying is you're more valuable to advertisers . . . which means the amount you are worth to them grows with the amount you'd spend to avoid them.
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.
I recently solved this problem by buying the Dell U5226KW. It has the same height as a 16:9 42" TV, but is 21:9, so a lot wider. It costs about four times as much as a similar sized 16:9 TV and you can't get it any bigger.
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."
People worried about LG. Use Android, iOS and Windows. Use Facebook and TikTok! Use WhatApp and get shocked TikTok keeps all data, video, images, text and reads it. Same as WhatsApp. Drive a Tesla. Have that Ring on the door and other devices.
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.
At what point do we need to contend with an out-of-band mesh network? Sure you didn't connect your TV to your LAN, but did anyone within LoRa range, on any device from the manufacturer?
We do that but use a Kubuntu Linux laptop behind the TV and a wireless mouse and keyboard (when we want to pause a movie in Chrome and search for something, like details about an actor in a movie).
I've gotten frustrated enough with my Apple TV that once my gen of hardware is no longer supported I'll replace it with a Raspberry Pi. I don't need fancy apps, just a browser for Jellyfin and (sometimes) YouTube. Any other incidental streaming service usage can also be done through a browser anyway.
There it is. Not a single TV at my house ever seen a WiFi password. I add cheap Amazon FireStick and be done. Sure Amazon also spies on me but as far as I know original FireStick does not have built-in microphone and probably is not scanning/copying my LAN content to some cloud/back home. And at any time I can just throw it in the trash, get another $29 device. Once I/you plug WiFi password to your TV, there is now way of coming back.
The leaked advertising pitch videos from them where they say "we own the glass" as a pitch to potential advertising partners, about a tv they sold me just viscerally pissed me off so I'm kind of just done with them even if thats an irrationally strong response. The whole attitude just makes me so mad.
Also debunked in the Gamer Nexus video. The TV will scan for public wifis and connect. Watching the video, it also seemed like a "missed opportunity" for LG to not create a mesh network of LG devices that would help eachother connect to the internet. So the LG device on your neighbours wifi might help your not connected TV to some tasty internet access. Or at least to unload its cache of A(V)CR fingerprints.
There are so many misunderstandings about that video. Which ain’t surprising as it was longer than a movie and mainly nonsense about what it can do rather than what it does do.
Agreed. I’ve come to believe that the video’s benefit from bringing awareness to the issue is outweighed by how misleading it is. Massive amounts of the video were “we hacked the TV and made it do [bad thing]” and was reported as “LG TVs do [bad thing]!”
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the television would search for unsecured wi-fi or other ways of connecting to the internet without user input.
I agree, it would be easy for a security research to discover if a TV tried to do that and would result in an even greater stuffstorm than LG is dealing with now or that Samsung dealt with in the past.
It’s absolutely unreasonable. Each subscriber has a certain amount of fixed bandwidth available to them, and there are other devices connected to their network. By connecting an unauthorized device, that device now has both the ability to consume bandwidth to which it’s not entitled, and potentially scan the network for vulnerabilities.
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.
I'm not sure if any TVs currently do this, but they could connect to unsecured public WiFi without the user doing anything, if one were available with no password. Fortunately such networks aren't that common most places, but it's not a big leap from the sketchy things LG and other companies do. They could also put SIMs in them if they wanted. Again, I don't know that any do that, but I wouldn't put it past them. I'm not that paranoid, but I don't trust them to be up front and ethical.
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?
I'm not sure of the current state of it, but a few years back specturm was selling access to a private network based on consumer routers. Tmobile could partner with them so that one of their customers could go through spectrum instead of the cell towers in cases where connections were spotty.
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.
Xfinity/Comcast does the same thing. By default, the router they provide has a separate WiFi network supporting their distributed WiFi service. It's only for their customers, and it's not an open no-password network, but I'm certain they would offer it to any company that paid for access. They also have WiFi APs on telephone poles to broaden coverage.
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.
> 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.
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.
Agreed. I leave my tv disconnected from the internet, and connect my Apple TV instead… the default UX on most tvs is so much slower and add-riddled than Apple’s
I have a 10-year-old LG TV that runs webOS 3. The first update slowed it down - not that it was particularly fast to begin with - and every subsequent update made it even slower.
It also constantly nags you to update the firmware. You can’t just refuse once; every time you turn on the TV, it asks you again.
I won’t make the same mistake the next time I go shopping for a TV.
Forgot to mention - there were no improvements whatsoever in terms of functionality.
The US agreement says it too. They make you agree to them collecting it. It says they listen to everything that's said in the vicinity and you agree to inform any guests to your house that they're being recorded at all times. But nobody reads that.
And if anyone didn’t watch GN’s video on it, it’s thousands of pages of text requiring a button press to scroll each. It’s designed for no one to read.
We should have laws that limit this kinda of “agreements”
The GDPR does. Consent to data processing must be unambiguous, accessible, informed in plain language with no legal or technical jargon, and not have any preselected boxes.
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.
They should flat out be banned for consumer electronics and goods.
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".
> Audio used for wake-word detection is processed locally on the TV and, if no wake word is detected, audio is not converted to text, stored, or transmitted. Voice-recognition results and related technical logs may be generated as part of processing a voice command. These records are associated with specific voice interactions and do not indicate continuous recording of conversations occurring outside an active voice recognition session.
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.
So very strange every time I visit Tomshardware.com, I get a pop-up on my iPhone that asked me "Do you want to download "sync-pixel" on
"usync.ingage.tech"?
What is that? And why does it only happen on that website?
Leaving TVs disconnected from the internet is the only way to ignore this.
Connect your own devices and smarts to it.
A broader issue is that it does any kind of recording, or screen capture, or hashing, ever, even for a millisecond in a way that is not controlled by settings.
A tiny crack in LG tvs can be an attack vector for security and safety.
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 brand is a promise of an experience. This brand has broken a promise and it can’t be pretending it didn’t.
So what? We allow people and corporations to lie under almost all circumstances, including most ads and press releases. Get them under oath, if they still deny spying, that would be a minor news item.
Bold from the verge, as clicking the link to go to the official statement took me through 3 redirect trackers as picked up by my browser/extensions (I think ubo to be specific)
> 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.
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).
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)
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.
As per HN thread last week
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.
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
Other people have mentioned there's other voice features like diction/voice control, so it's plausibly for that.
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.
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 :(
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
source: i made it up
That case sure put Mark Russinovich on everyone’s radars, at least.
Good times.
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.
Also they provided a statement earlier to Gizmodo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628328
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
When they spend 400 on a tv and sell it for 410 and sell the data for 40 it doesn’t mean the data makes 4 times as much as the tv. The cost of gathering that data is still 400, they have nothing to sell without spending 409 in the hardware.
They have good accountants isn’t it?
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.
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.
Trust broken, words out, and their statement doesn’t really do anything to mending that.
LG is truly an adversial party in all of this.
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.
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”
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.
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".
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
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.
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 screen capture, or hashing, ever, even for a millisecond in a way that is not controlled by settings.
A tiny crack in LG tvs can be an attack vector for security and safety.
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 brand is a promise of an experience. This brand has broken a promise and it can’t be pretending it didn’t.