An investigation by Gamers Nexus found LG smart TVs sweep local networks to map phones and nearby devices. Tests also showed the sets can capture microphone audio with the screen off — they then upload data once reconnected to the internet.
My LG TV runs WebOS, which is a linux distro. I have been wondering how hard it is to root and replace with a distro of my own choosing. I had thought because my TV is pretty old that I was safe from the more sophisticated spying, but last week it interrupted what I was watching and would not let me continue using it without agreeing to new terms of use. This revived my interest in rooting it.
Waiting for the “No idea how this happened! We’re sorry and promise to make this better in future versions” moment - instead of admitting that this is just their business model.
Hoping for prosecution from the EU and at least one other country.
And that’s why I have a VLAN without outbound connections allowed. Still allows me to cast to the device from a separate vlan but the TV has no internet at all.
Seriously, this is the way. I did this too in about 15 mins. Also setup a simple rule to allow the vlan to reach my homeserver in a separate vlan specifically on Plex and Jellyfin ports. That’s it. They cant phone home. You still enjoy your own media.
Yeah if you setup the firewall correctly you can access the TV but the TV can’t access anything it self.
Did this a few month back. Then my Sony TV decided to hide all apps when it has no internet for a few weeks. I guess when the internal disk is filling up and it needs to phone home again. What a shit show!
So I had to connect again, but now https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu is running, to hopefully never be coerced to go online again.
Jellyfin ftw.
So this is why every product started to go standby, low power mode, instead of turning off.
I’m shocked, i tell you, shocked!
Great, I wonder what my fridge is up to. It’s LG and has wifi for some reason. I never connected it to my network, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they take advantage of open networks anyway
I tested this when my LG fridge was new, and got a warning when I left the door open. Quite helpful. But still disabled.
The regular beeping speaker/piezo solves the same problem without WiFi or other shenanigans.
Secretly recording conversations in peoples homes sounds like it should be against the law in a number of countries.
Imagine someone working for the government, security services, or a defence contractor. I suspect LG may be in trouble with a number of National Security agencies.
Or hired by those same agents of authority.
It is illegal. Unfortunately crime is legal for corporations. They just pay the crime fee and can continue undisturbed. Shareholders must be held responsible individually, otherwise it will only get worse.
Not shareholders. Decision makers. Upper msnagement. Shareholders shpuld pay in share value (the finantial penalty to the corporations should be high enough to affect that), bu the personal an criminal responsibility belongs to managers, CEO in particular.
Shareholders must be held responsible individually
So, are you personally on the hook here because the company managing your pension fund is holding stocks in LG? Because that technically makes you a shareholder as it was bought with your money, right?
Edit: not sure why I get downvoted, this is a legitimate concern/nuance to the debate. The managing company doesn’t own these stocks so they’re not the shareholders, that’s the people whose money they are managing, but these people are not directly in control of the funds. Who is the liable party in this?
The highest level employee/officer who had knowledge of it should be held responsible
It doesn’t matter how many layers of evasion there are. Responsibility has to be with individuals in order for there to be change.
The fact that a pension fund can hold shareholds is crazy by itself, also, is the pension found a company or managed by your state? It shouldn’t really be a thing in first place
is the pension fund a company or managed by your state?
Both in my case, as there are both the government pension fund that is mandatory and the one used by my employer which uses one of the large primary pension institutions in my country.
Is it a bit weird that I don’t just manage all my pensions myself? Yes, a bit. But it’s how its done in my country and it has some tax benefits compared to getting the money in hand and investing myself.
Is it a bit weird that I don’t just manage all my pensions myself?
Naah, at least, i don’t know anyone that does it in my country
Recording without consent is very much a crime in any single-party state, but my guess is that the TOS that people click past to use the TV gives them permission to record you. If it didn’t, they would be in big legal hot water.
Clicking through ToS does not magically make illegal things legal.
Consenting to recording makes recording legal.
Making that consent required to use the TV or its features and it being buried within lengthy, opaque terms of service in a country with a low level of literacy should be illegal, but it stands in the US because it’s a consumer hostile country.
Should be. Hope it happens and quickly
Only in trouble if they didn’t loop them in on the audio feeds.
I guess it’s time to start unplugging everything at the wall when not in use
EU really should regulate against this kind of behaviour
EU lobbies won’t ever allow it.
In the later years the EU regulations have been massively disappointing. Only favouring big EU companies and destroying little businesses and the european consumers.
Some disappointing eu regulations:
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The cookiesgate. Your data is still going around everywhere. You just have a pop up everywhere that means nothing.
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¿Replaceable batteries on smartphones? No, only for cheap chinese phones if so. The big players can pay for some european certification on the quality of their batteries and doesn’t need to be replaceable.
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¿Stop killing games? Hahahaha don’t ever think about it.
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You are buying too much, we need you poorer. So we put up a 3€ tariffs per
categoryproduct on chinese stores so you are forced to buy the exact same product to an european retailer at twice the price. -
We heard you like the environment, what about a new complicated tax on packaging so all small business cannot function and only big business are allowed to send products within the european union.
I think the days of the EU legislation saving the day are far off.
Liberalism will always be corrupted by capitalism at the end of the the day. Maybe some systems last a decade or two longer, but it’s all bound to fall.
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Problem us that there are too few tech literate politicians
Problem is lobbying.
ding-ding-ding
AKA legal corruption
The problem is way worse: big tech
contributes tobribes politicians to vote according to industry interests.It’s not the politicians job to know everything but to make decisions and legislate based on information from the expertise. It is the people in the know that need to make the proposals for the politicians to bring it up. It’s us, the tech literate, that need to write proposals that are informative with arguments derived from trusted sources to make the politicians aware that these are concerns that need to be addressed.
Sadly, I don’t have time or money to do that. You know who does? Big tech does!
Let’s all lie belly up and do nothing and accept that nothing will ever change for the better because nobody else is doing it for us and it is impossible for us to change the world all alone. This is exactly the defeatist mindset that the economic elites want people to have.
You could do something small, like find out your representatives and write a personal mail to them, informing them from your point of view. With enough people doing small things and some doing big things the chances for things like this gaining traction are magnitudes bigger than giving up in advance. It takes a few hours to a few days depending on your dedication and whatever cost coffee is in your area of residence.
I ran a packet capture on my TV as I left it turned off overnight.
They wake up in the middle of the night, do “stuff” then go back offline. Like a zombie.
I have basically every URL our TV automatically pings blocked at this point. It phones home every 10-30 seconds whether they’re off or on. I think when we get a new TV we’re looking for a dumb TV
Oh, nice. Who doesn’t like their fucking TV snooping on them?
Ugh. So blocklists were not enough. Time to isolate my telly on the router.
If your television is connected to any network at all its already too late.
Amazon Sidewalk - even if you didn’t connect it, it could still be spying
Even then it’s rumoured some brands of TV try to connect to Bluetooth connected devices to connect to the net. I think that was Samsung.
You could try to host your DNS, change the router DNS to that and then spend a while to see to which addresses the TV talk to and block them, it’s probably time consuming but if you have that time, it can work
Yeah, I know. I have a blocklist for LG and other common brands compiled by someone else on my router DNS adblocker. But considering how sneaky they are with collecting information they should stay the fuck away from, I bet they have mechanisms to get around their common ad domains for the data that matters.
My LG TV is not getting network privileges, ever. I wonder if there is a way to turn off the WiFi radio altogether.
A soldering iron will do it…
Isn’t that what android does all the time?
No.
That said, the whole reason Android exists today is because Google was getting a lot of personal data from Gmail, but when they saw Andy Rubin’s invention, they realised they could get a lot more personal data with a phone, so they bought Android from him.
Android collects a lot of data (as that is its primary purpose for Google), but it doesn’t upload everything you say. It — or, more accurately, Google Play Services (and possibly other services) do other underhanded things to exfiltrate your data from the device back to Google. Like if you try to use an ad blocker, it will use DNS filtering to tunnel around the ad blocker for its own uses.
The wildest thing is, Google successfully ran an ad campaign convincing people their way was the right way and that Apple’s way of doing things was wrong. That’s a big part of why Apple is trying to be more like Google. They’re certainly not hurting for money, but they see people willingly accepting this sort of thing, so they’re realising more and more how much money they’re leaving on the table. Imagine if it had gone the other way, if more people rejected Google and its data collecting practices. We’d probably be paying more for some things since we’re not (also) the product, but more companies would be putting privacy first. Because that’s what the consumers would be demanding. But no, we have people out there, a metric fuck ton of them, saying privacy is negotiable. So, companies are negotiating with privacy — mostly against it.
Depends on the ROM/OEM.
Clarification: Most Android users don’t use custom firmware (“ROM”). OEM means the company that makes your phone. All the major ones use Google Play Services. Nothing and OnePlus might be exceptions as those are known for using custom firmware that is more private. Also, Pixel phones running GrapheneOS ostensibly do not include Google Play Services. But Pixel phones don’t ship with GrapheneOS. You have to add that yourself by unlocking the bootloader (available deep in the settings, wipes the phone), and manually flashing the custom firmware (CFW or “ROM”) to the phone.
Welp glad I never put in my WiFi. This’ll be my last LG
