LG TVs Caught Logging Audio and Scanning Wi-Fi Even When Offline

Smart TVs have long been a privacy black box, but a new investigation from Gamers Nexus, in collaboration with Level1Techs and independent security researchers, pulls back the curtain on just how much data LG's OLEDs collect — and when. The findings are uncomfortable for anyone who has ever connected one of these sets to a network.

Packet captures from retail LG OLEDs showed the TVs continuously scanning the local area network for nearby hardware — phones, smartwatches, anything with a MAC address — and logging details about nearby Wi-Fi networks and location data. That information is fed back to LG Ad Solutions, the company's advertising arm.

More troubling is the microphone behavior. The TVs were capable of recording audio while in standby mode, and this continued even after the TV was disconnected from the internet. Audio files were stored locally and uploaded once a connection was restored. So even an "offline" TV isn't truly offline — it's just buffering its surveillance until it can phone home.

The third piece is Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), which uses audio and video sampling to identify what's on screen, whether from the TV's own smart interface or from external inputs like HDMI. ACR is not unique to LG; a separate video from RTINGS notes that nearly every smart TV manufacturer uses some form of it to track viewing habits.

This isn't LG's first run-in with Gamers Nexus. Earlier this year, the channel reported that some LG monitors were auto-installing an app that collected device data and served pop-up ads for LG and McAfee. That incident drew Microsoft's attention and eventually led LG to disable the ads.

The practical takeaway for engineers and consumers alike: if you care about privacy, a smart TV should be treated as a network device with a microphone and camera, not a dumb display. Air-gapping it is the only sure way to stop the data flow — but as this report shows, even that only delays the upload, not the collection.