LG's denial over TV spying claims ‘does not address the full privacy picture’, experts say — after report accuses it of making ‘216,000,000 spy TVs’
Earlier this week LG found itself at the center of a privacy storm over how much tracking and data collection its TVs were involved in.
An investigation by Gamers Nexus found that as well as analyzing viewing habits, LG sets were also collecting voice recordings, details of networked devices, location data, and wireless network information.
That's all useful data that advertisers love of course, and that seems to be the primary reason that LG has this tracking tech built into its TVs.
The reaction online was predictably one of outrage, with Redditors describing it as "extremely creepy" and vowing never to buy LG products again in the future.
LG itself has categorically said that the claims made by Gamers Nexus are "not true".
LG says voice recordings are also used to process voice commands, for example, and get instantly deleted.
LG goes on to state that the network scans are to provide "smart TV functionalities" — and that it's something TVs from every manufacturer do.
As for the Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) feature that tracks what you watch and serves up personalized recommendations (and ads) for you, LG emphasizes that this is opt-in, and that users can choose not to have ACR data used for advertising purposes.
So is the technology LG has implemented here standard practice for the industry and nothing you need to worry about? Or do you need to start disconnecting your TV from the internet? We spoke to four privacy experts to get their opinions.
What did LG say? (Image credit: Getty Images / Odd Andersen) If you missed the news earlier this week, here's the full statement LG gave us in response to the Gamer Nexus accusations.
"This is to provide LG's position regarding the claims recently raised by the Gamers Nexus YouTube channel.
The claims made in the recently published video are not true.
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 recognised after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature.
Other than these instances, the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.techradar.com — the content belongs to TechRadar.
