What the TV does by design: — scans your entire home network continuously. in their test: one TV identified 38 unrelated devices including phones, smartwatches, printers, and thermostats belonging to people not involved in the test. — collects the names and signal strengths of every nearby WiFi network, plus location data. all sent to LG Ad Solutions. — runs ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) on everything displayed on screen. including HDMI inputs. your laptop, gaming console, or work monitor connected to the TV is being fingerprinted. — one TV exchanged roughly 4GB of ACR-related data per month. What the TV does that LG says it doesn't: LG publicly stated their TVs "do not collect, record, or store ambient conversations." Gamers Nexus found: — the TV converts speech to plain text and stores it in on-device logs — the microphone window stays open 10 to 15 seconds after talking stops, capturing bystanders who never addressed the TV — the TV recorded room audio while the screen appeared off and the Ethernet cable was unplugged, then exfiltrated the file the moment it reconnected The security vulnerabilities on top: Beyond the designed behavior, researchers found remote code execution vulnerabilities in webOS that could allow a compromised TV to be weaponized as a covert listening device. these sets are in hospitals. waiting rooms. boardrooms. hotels. a surgeon asked Gamers Nexus where that leaves patient confidentiality. Gamers Nexus has no answer. neither does LG. What to do right now: — disconnect your LG TV from your network entirely. route streaming through an Apple TV, Roku, or Fire Stick instead. — if you must keep it connected: put it on a separate IoT VLAN or guest network so it cannot reach your other devices. — disable the built-in microphone in settings. — check your privacy dashboard and opt out of ACR and ad personalization. — after every firmware update: recheck all of the above. Credit to Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and other independent researchers.