LG smart TVs running webOS have been caught actively logging voice prompts, capturing microphone audio in standby mode, and mapping local network devices to feed advertising profiles. Security researchers and hardware investigators revealed the covert data sweeps, prompting blunt advice: disconnect the sets from the internet entirely.
Network Reconnaissance From the Living Room
That expensive flat-panel display in the family room reportedly has a second job running background surveillance. Recent technical investigations conducted by Gamers Nexus, working alongside Level1Techs and independent security researchers, have uncovered aggressive data harvesting built straight into LG’s smart television ecosystem. Using Wireshark packet captures and rigorous bench testing on retail OLED models including the G5, researchers discovered that the operating system quietly sweeps home networks the moment the screen goes dark.
Rather than merely idling, the television acts as a local reconnaissance tool. It catalogues hardware that has nothing to do with watching television, gathering internal IP addresses, neighboring Wi-Fi network names, signal strengths, and location data. As investigator Steve Burke documented, the TV crawled our entire network and found dozens of unrelated devices, including smartwatches and phones of our staff who didn't even know we were working on this.
This sweeping data collection is directly fed into LG Ad Solutions, the company’s targeted advertising arm. While LG claims roughly 216 million smart TV sales globally, its ad division boasts access to 363 million secondary addressable devices in the US alone by tracking other hardware on the same network.
Furthermore, the television sets run Automated Content Recognition (ACR), which samples on-screen audio and video into digital fingerprints to log what users watch across inputs. A new 135-minute-long video published by Gamers Nexus details how testing revealed webOS logging user voice prompts in plain text. Bench tests also showed the sets can capture microphone audio with the screen off, uploading the collected data once reconnected to the internet.
The Screen Is Off. The Microphone Isn’t.
Standby mode functions as a setting rather than a promise of complete shutdown. Bench tests confirmed that the built-in microphone can record clean audio in standby with the screen dark under test conditions. When the testing team disconnected the TV from Ethernet, the set continued saving voice input locally and uploaded the stored files once network access was restored. Offline storage merely serves as a delay rather than full protection.
Compounding these findings, webOS carries documented remote code execution vulnerabilities currently moving through the responsible disclosure process.
What To Actually Do About It
Because of the broad network listeners and data sweeps functioning right out of the box, the researchers’ recommendation is straight-up disconnecting LG sets from the internet and using external streaming devices via HDMI instead. LG has not commented on any of these findings as of writing.
