LG Denies TV Spying Claims as Reviewers Say Every Smart TV Tracks Viewers Too

Since Gamers Nexus posted its two-hour-and-15-minute investigation on Monday, September 7, alleging LG smart TVs record and store audio even in standby mode, LG has issued repeated denials, and this week the story widened into a broader reckoning over what every smart TV maker collects on its customers.

Gamers Nexus, working with Level1Techs and independent researchers MrBruh and uturn, ran packet captures and firmware analysis on LG televisions. They say the sets scanned local Wi-Fi networks, logged connected devices like phones and printers, and in some cases stored audio locally while disconnected from the internet, later uploading it once reconnected, according to Tom's Hardware and Malwarebytes. Gamers Nexus branded its findings "216,000,000 Spy TVs," a figure matching LG's own stated global installed base, according to Al Jazeera.

LG has pushed back hard. "The claims made in the recently published video are not true," the company told Tom's Hardware. LG says voice data is only processed when a user presses and holds the remote's microphone button or says the wake word "Hi LG" after turning on Far-Field voice recognition, and that audio is "immediately deleted if the wake word is not recognised," per its statement to Al Jazeera. LG confirmed its TVs do scan for other devices on the home network, but says that's standard for smart TVs and smart-home gear generally, not something unique or nefarious.

What's confirmed and what isn't

LG's admission that its TVs scan local networks is not in dispute; the company says so itself. Automatic content recognition, which fingerprints audio or video to identify what's playing and feed that data to advertisers, is also confirmed industry-wide practice, according to CNET and PCMag, and it's typically enabled by default on newer sets.

LG TVs recording ambient conversations while appearing off and storing that audio for later retrieval remains contested. LG flatly denies this happens in normal use. Gamers Nexus says it demonstrated the capability in testing, including audio captured up to 12 meters away, according to Al Jazeera. Malwarebytes notes some of the researchers' findings involve intended product behavior while others rely on security vulnerabilities still going through responsible disclosure with LG, meaning the full technical details haven't been made public yet.

Yash Vekaria, a computer science researcher at UC Davis, told Al Jazeera the risk isn't hypothetical for long-lived devices: "This vulnerability can allow sniffing much more critical conversations. Imagine government officials discussing national security in their hotel room next to an LG TV." That's a real concern about how long unpatched TVs stay in homes, not evidence LG is currently listening to anyone by default.

CNET's framing is worth taking seriously. Voice assistants have to always be listening for a wake word to function at all, the same way a smart speaker or phone does, and that processing happens on-device. "Both sides are right," CNET wrote, "because, yes, the TV is 'always listening,' but from LG's point of view, it's only listening for certain words." That's a fair description of how the technology works, distinct from Gamers Nexus's separate claim that a compromised or exploited TV could be turned into a surveillance device.

Not just LG

The Verge, in a piece that ran nearly identically on NewsBeep, argues LG became the face of a problem every manufacturer shares. TV prices have fallen for years, sometimes to the point where companies sell hardware at a loss, and Verge reviewer John Higgins says the shortfall gets made up selling behavioral data, pointing to Walmart's 2024 acquisition of Vizio as evidence of how valuable that data pipeline is. Higgins also flagged that LG's consent screens showed six separate agreements with the cursor pre-set to "Select All" when only two were actually required, a dark pattern that pushes users toward broader data sharing than necessary.

No regulator has opened a formal investigation into LG or any other TV maker over these claims, and no charges or fines have been announced. PCMag, Malwarebytes and CNET all published practical guides this week for disabling ACR and voice features across brands including Samsung, Roku and Vizio, on the reasoning that the fix doesn't require waiting on a company statement or a government probe.

The unresolved piece is the remote-code-execution vulnerabilities Gamers Nexus and its research partners reported to LG. Those are still moving through responsible disclosure, according to Malwarebytes, meaning the public won't get full technical details until LG has had a chance to patch them, and there's no confirmed timeline yet for when that happens.