I’ve been waiting on this report for a while when they first reported the privacy concern.
I’m less than 30% into the video and not sure why I’m still shocked by all of this.
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Haven’t made my way through the video yet, but it does raise an interesting question of if Android TV’s set up using their “basic TV mode” and never connected to the internet have a (weird) advantage? Android TV’s also allow for ADB changes for advanced users that AFAIK none of the other smart tv OS’ allow for.
a “dumb” TV is the best route, but I guess if I had to set up something for the average consumer the route I would take today is a Android/Google TV set up in basic mode, never connected to the internet, with a Apple TV hooked up with some kind of DNS filter loaded onto it.
But sad that this all feels like “I would rather get kicked in the groin vs. being stabbed” choices.
Another video related to same topic (Not sure was this video already linked to forum)
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I mean in knew smart TVs were bad…
But wow this somehow managed to sink my low expectations.
Damn thing is just waiting to connect to internet to upload audio logs and hashes of what you did over HDMI. Even if you never connect it, it’s just a problem waiting to happen as soon as some dumb guest connects it to wifi
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Hopefully this inspires someone to make a good replacement somehow but there should be a consumer-friendly tv you can just buy.
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do old lgs do this? (20 years i think)
Whoa, this is so much worse than I thought. I’m completely unplugging the TV when I travel now.
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Realistically, you should unplug the TV when you’re HOME and not watching it.
Edit: For the interested 0650 TV-Video Cut Off Timer - AES Corporation
The TVs are being sold at a loss meaning very few companies are able to compete with large manufacturers. Dumb TVs also won’t be an option a few years from now as it’s cheaper to reuse old production lines and their chips.
But you don’t really need to watch linear TV with it. The age of monoculture is over. You also don’t need to watch 100 pointless Roku channels over web, or even Jellyfin over LAN. TVs will support gaming consoles until the unforeseeable future, meaning they’ll support HDMI inputs meaning they’ll support your Linux computer with all of its privacy features.
You’ll just have to ensure the TV has no internet access. It rarely even needs it. Disconnect Ethernet and change your WiFi password. You can disable spying from settings but it’ll probably collect it anyway, only with “user wanted to opt out” flag set like the recent GN video on LG monitor talked about.
When the TV never gets to phone home it doesn’t matter what it has collected. It just sits there on the device until it goes through the woodchipper.
So my recommendation is to look for a long term solution for the TV. OLED probably isn’t burn-in proof yet. So get a good FALD mini-LED TV of decent size, 55-65", and use it until it dies, and in 10-25 years when prices go down, try to update to a microLED panel TV that doesnt require internet and then try to use it until it dies.
Whatever energy this categorical fix saves, use it to write to your representative about the importance of legislation that guards civil liberties.
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Oh man, what they showed was worse than I thought. And the arrogance in some of these LG executives. My goodness, shows you how far society has gone for the worse.
I’m expecting some manufacturers to capitalize on this and release “privacy focused” TVs.
I watched this one after. This is like the consumer friendly version. I’m sharing that video with friends and family who are less tech savvy.
The GN video deep dives and will definitely attract more of the privacy conscious and tech savvy people.
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IIRC it’s mostly TVs from the last 10 years. Though they also mentioned how TVs which didn’t have an easy way to be targeted get a firmware update and suddenly had an active advertisement ID
To be clear, the TVs are being sold below market rate as a loss leader, with the expectation that data harvested from the product will more than make up for the pricing. From LG’s perspective, and the perspective of every other large TV manufacturer, most TVs are sold as to generate income over their lifetime. It’s only the ones that never connect to the internet that ever truly are sold at a loss.
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i dont use it much im only interested in the microphone and camera (idk if it has one)
Yeah I meant to express something along the lines but clearly never completed the thought. Your analysis is spot on, thanks!
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Thanks for the share! I worked on this investigation if you have any questions on it! We tried to hack our TVs as well with a MITM like Wendell explains at 31:23 but we also failed. That said, we are way less security experts than the guy Steve went to get! The firmware decompiling was a gold mine we missed out on! Super glad Gamer Nexus dig that far!
For our part, we really focused about the omnipotence of ACR in all smart TVs brand, and streaming boxes. They already know what you watch everywhere. It also seems like they can also listen to their hearts desires as well!
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I opted out of ACR and all user agreements during initial setup of my 4-yo LG. It did an OTA update soon after but not since. I don’t see a way to disable OTA.
Never connected over ethernet or WI-FI. According to its own settings there’s no network or WI-FI connectivity at all.
Its only ever been connected via an Amazon Firestick running Proton VPN.
Its powered off when not in use.
I still don’t trust but I’m nobody 
so who cares?
I wonder if using a dedicated guest WiFi network for the TV, combined with a Pi-hole blocking all of the undesirable connections, would still allow the TV to function whilst cutting off that data collection?
LG response to Gamers Nexus video
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For our study on ACR, we’ve tested the DNS block with Pihole. It really depends on the TV brand and OS. For some, the analytics servers are clearly identified and can be blocked. My favorite example of this is Samsung’s “log-ingestion.samsungacr.com”. But there are other TVs that mixed analytics servers with functionalities, meaning blocking the server will break some features.
The only TVs we could clearly identify ACR traffic were the Samsung S95F OLED, Sony Bravia 8 II, and LG G5.
That said, I’m only talking about ACR here. There are other ways that TV suck your personal data, and apart from putting them offline, I don’t think there is a fool-proof way to completely block it. But, if you are ok with some compromise between privacy and functionality, then yes, DNS block can help with some TVs. I’m sorry I can’t offer a better recommendation than this!
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That’s really good information, thank you! I think eventually I’ll end up using large monitors instead of TVs, though I think even they are starting to go the same way.
Thanks for the info!
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