Earlier this week, Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers detailed some alarming findings about how LG’s TVs are logging and uploading data on its users. Now the company is pushing back against those allegations, saying that “Some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work.”
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” and that wake-word detection is all processed locally. However, the word “continuously” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated an LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations long after one would assume its AI assistant had stopped listening.
One thing I think a lot of people tend to miss when dealing with executive interviews, PR statements, and company advertising is that often times how a company defines a given term and how the actual dictionary and everyone in the world defines that term are not the same thing unless it is legally required.
Textbook examples:
Telsa, Musk, and self driving: Musk and Tesla define it as essentially what everyone else called lane assist. Then they have “full self driving” for what is supposed to be the thing everyone else would think of as self driving.
OpenAI, Sam Altman, and AGI (artificial general intelligence): No one in the AI industry has an agreed upon definition of what AGI even means. The AI labs just throw it out there for hype and funding rounds and tweak the meaning to them as they need. To most normal people I would suspect AGI means “a machine that knows its a machine and is at least as smart as the average person”.
Point being when LG says “ its TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,” that can mean literally anything they can twist human communication methods to mean in their specific context. And it is usually the one that makes them the most money.
“We own the glass” is enough for me to never buy an LG again. I own two never contacted to the internet, but Jesus that’s gross.
The response, “Look Bryan, you should be the last one to accuse anyone of terrible things when you just casually keep a vibrating replica of smurfette’s genitals in your guest bedroom, in the bottom drawer of the left nightstand.”
TL;DW: LG is using very weasely wording to misrepresent what they’re doing, and GN calls their bluff (with data and receipts)
They’re sooo sorry
The response: “we hear you!”
I have an LG C3 that I never connected to Wifi or plugged an ethernet cable into. I only use it with my nvidia shield running lineage OS, am I still affected by this / anything I should do?
Yes you’re still effected.
It’s not unreasonable to assume it may have been connected to the internet unbeknownst to you if there’s been an unsecured network close by that your tv could connect to.
An attacker could (and gamers Nexus demonstrated this) connect to your television and read transcripts of things you’ve said in your house when you didn’t realise your tv was listening. If you’ve never used the voice recognition wake word around your tv you might be ok, but an attacker can also change the wake word to something you might casually say (they showed this too)
If you do own an LG tv it’s worth watching the gamers Nexus video to fully be aware of what is happening.
Effect: a thing: particle effects, fireworks, special effects
Affect: something is changed: affected by politics, smoking in public affects others, affected by the amount of love from your parents
It’s a big corporation so we should believe them. /s
I personally have no misconceptions about the intrusive data collecting, aggregating, identifying and reselling that LG is doing with their residential customers via their televisions, nor about the entitled way LG and its corporate representatives and officers have spoken about their right to gather it.
“We own the glass,” they repeat, as though that means they also own whatever is spoken beyond the glass in the same house. In reality, they own neither.
Nor am I misled by LG’s weasel words that address problems not ever specifically raised, while completely swerving around actual problems publicly demonstrated with their products.
But I will say they are laboring under a serious misconception if they think I will ever buy one from them. They can fuck ALL the way off with that shit.
LG released a statement in which it claims that its “TVs do not continuously record or transmit users’ conversations,”
But with a 100 trigger words?
They stop recording for 12 minutes a day.
To send all the data they collected back “home”.
After the recent controversies, I added a bunch of blockers for LG trackers to my pi-hole, to stop my 8 year old TV from collecting data. It blocked a lot at first, but then suddenly nothing, I investigated a bit and saw that it had started sending only to their Vietnamese servers, which were missing from my blocklist.
Make sure you block all regions!
I looked up the domains registered by logitech electronics and logitech corp.
Blocked the hell out of those.In case anyone is interested: https://github.com/Appoxo/Ad-Spam-Blocklist/blob/master/hosts.txt
Forgive me for using GitHub
“Logitech Electronics”. Autocorrect?
No, brainfart ;)
Are Logitech involved in this too?
Not sure what Logitech has to do with it?
But sure, block their spyware too (logi+ options)I looked up the domains registered by logitech electronics and logitech corp.
Blocked the hell out of those.Sorry, you brought them up.
It might help a few people if you shared the domains you blocked.
If they were actually wrong about anything, LG would be suing the pants off them right now.
Instead LG are “debunking” claims that weren’t actually made.
Exactly this.
If any of GN’s claims were false, it’d be a very serious case of false allegations. LG could easily sue them, win quickly, get a couple million dollars in damages, and more.
The fact that they’re not suing tells us all we need to know.
Yeah, even then lots of times courts are used in asymmetrical economic situations against the smaller party so not always a tell with shitty actors.
(paraphrasing, but)
From just the BSSID these TVs are collecting they know your precise fucking location and can pinpoint it based on signal strength to the nearest street. WiFi Positioning System is cursed. Amazingly, BSSID can also tell you who the customer is based on “public” records since ISPs keep track of this kind of thing when they hand out free routers.
Not addressing the other areas amounts to confirmation
“Misleading” can be such a telling wiggle word.
Lies Good™
