The South Korean tech giant LG is alleged to be using its smart TVs to harvest extensive household data even when screens are turned off.
The allegations come after a three-month investigation by YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, which worked with technology platform Level1Techs and independent cybersecurity researchers to analyse the tracking capabilities of LG’s retail OLED models like the G3 and G5 series.
In their resulting 135-minute investigative video, Gamers Nexus editor-in-chief Steve Burke claims that LG is operating "216,000,000 spy TVs".
“LG TVs are able to be utilised as eavesdropping listening devices in part because of the advertising functionality that’s built into them,” said Burke in the video.
This is not the first time that smart TVs have been accused of tracking and selling details about users’ watching habits to advertisers. They are able to do this via a controversial piece of technology known as automatic content recognition (ACR) that is bundled into new TVs...