The Smart TV That Watches What You Watch and Maps Your Network
By Ken Macon
LG calls it smart home functionality. The researchers found something closer to a household census.
LG smart TVs are not only collecting data about what you’re watching, but also about what devices are connected to your home network, an investigation has found.
Other findings of the probe, conducted by Gamers Nexus in collaboration with Level1Techs’ Wendell and independent security researchers, include security flaws and the collection of voice transcripts.
The investigation looked into several LG smart TV models and found that the TVs are “identifying every device they can on our network upon activation,” as Gamers Nexus writes in its report. In one test, at least 38 devices were identified, including phones, smartwatches, printers, and thermostats. The TV sets also discover the names of devices and their internal IP addresses, as well as information about nearby Wi-Fi networks.
More: Big Brother Comes Built Into the Screen
LG is not the only TV maker that uses automatic content recognition (ACR) – but the investigation showed that its implementation is particularly difficult to evade. ACR is used to identify the content playing on a screen using digital fingerprints. The data is collected and sent to LG even when the TVs are used only as HDMI displays.
The researchers estimate that one of the tested sets was sending around 4 GB of ACR-related “fingerprint” data per month to LG’s servers. The company markets this feature as “Live Plus” and in the user manual explains that it is used for content recommendations, but also “interacting with advertisements.”
LG’s advertising business, LG Ad Solutions, promotes ACR as a means for advertisers to get “deterministic viewership data” covering content on the TV, including programs, movies, ads, games, and streaming apps. Advertisers can select audiences based on their viewing and purchase habits, subscription and service usage, location, and more.