Gamers Nexus Investigation Finds LG Smart TVs Scanning Networks and Capturing Audio in Standby, Even Offline

A 135-minute investigation from the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, done alongside Level1Techs and independent security researchers, says LG smart TVs collect far more household data than most owners realize, and keep doing it even when the TV looks off.

The team used Wireshark packet captures on retail LG OLED models, including the LG G5, according to Gamers Nexus and confirmed by allaboutcookies. They found the TVs actively scanning the local Wi-Fi network for other hardware, phones, smartwatches, laptops, printers, smart-home gear, logging internal IP addresses and device identifiers along the way, per Malwarebytes and the CyberSec Guru.

The TVs also collected nearby Wi-Fi network names and signal strength, combined with location data, according to multiple outlets covering the report including The Verge and TechRadar. Researchers say this behavior showed up out of the box, with no setting found that disables the network scanning on its own.

The most alarming claim: microphone audio capture during standby. Gamers Nexus says the TVs could log audio even when the screen appeared off, store those recordings locally when disconnected from the internet, and upload them once connectivity returned, a finding repeated by The Verge, Malwarebytes, and PCMag.

The CyberSec Guru points out this directly contradicts LG's own stated privacy language, which says its televisions "do not collect, record, or store ambient conversations." LG has not issued a public response to these specific findings as of this writing, according to the CyberSec Guru's reporting, and PCMag says it reached out to LG for comment but had not received a reply.

The ad business behind it

The scanning and audio findings sit alongside LG's long-known use of Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, which fingerprints what's on screen to identify programs and ads regardless of the app or input used. PCMag reports that LG's Ad Solutions site claims reach to 49 million LG smart TVs in the US and nearly 216 million worldwide, plus access to 363 million secondary devices, a figure Gamers Nexus notes exceeds LG's own TV sales, pointing to network-level device counting beyond the television itself.

Gamers Nexus's video includes clips of LG executives describing the pitch to advertisers in blunt terms, saying phrases like "we own the glass" and "we know who's in the LG household," according to TechRadar and PCMag. TechRadar quotes the fuller pitch: LG can "help extend an advertising campaign footprint to the other devices in the household."

ACR is industry-standard, not unique to LG. A companion video from RTINGS, cited by The Verge, found nearly every major smart TV manufacturer uses similar content-recognition tracking, and Malwarebytes notes Samsung already settled a lawsuit with the Texas Attorney General over its own ACR data practices. Manufacturers can argue this data collection is disclosed in privacy policies and terms of service, is switchable off in menus, and subsidizes cheaper TV hardware through ad revenue. LG's own settings menu, per PCMag, lets users turn off ACR under Settings, General, System, Advanced Settings, Live Plus.

What that opt-out does not appear to cover, according to the researchers, is the local network device scanning or the standby audio behavior, which the investigation says operated independently of the ACR toggle.

Security flaws, not just data collection

Beyond intended data collection, the research team says it found remote-code-execution vulnerabilities in LG's webOS software, according to Malwarebytes and the CyberSec Guru. Those flaws have been reported to LG but are not being fully disclosed publicly while a responsible disclosure process plays out, meaning the technical details and LG's remediation timeline remain unknown for now.

Some of what the investigation describes, the network scanning, the ACR fingerprinting, the ad-targeting infrastructure, appears to be intended product behavior that LG documents in its own advertiser-facing marketing. The standby audio capture and the unresolved RCE vulnerabilities are a separate, more serious category. Security researchers allege a compromised or misbehaving TV could give an attacker a foothold on a home network or access to a live microphone, a claim that has not been independently verified outside this investigation and remains under disclosure with LG.

This isn't LG's first run-in with Gamers Nexus this year. The channel reported in July 2026 that some LG monitors were auto-installing an app that collected device data and served pop-up ads, including for McAfee antivirus, according to The Verge. That report prompted an intervention from Microsoft and led LG to disable the pop-up ads.

LG has not publicly detailed its response to the new TV findings, and no regulatory investigation has been announced by any state or federal agency in the sources reviewed. The open question now is whether LG issues a firmware fix or policy statement, and what the still-undisclosed webOS vulnerabilities actually allow an attacker to do once researchers complete responsible disclosure.