Most of us still picture a television that goes dark and becomes furniture when the button is pressed. In September, the hardware-testing channel Gamers Nexus, working with Level1Techs and independent security researchers, published a long investigation arguing that on at least one line of LG’s OLED televisions, including the current G5, that model is wrong in every particular.
Their packet captures and storage forensics on retail sets showed the TV capturing microphone audio while it appeared to be off, mapping every other device on the home network and the neighbors’ Wi-Fi, and, when the network cable was pulled, saving what it gathered until the connection came back. The destination, the researchers said, was LG’s advertising division. The same team showed the set could be exploited to take control of it, a finding now in responsible disclosure with no public patch yet.
LG disputes the central claim. It told Tom’s Hardware on September 9 that “the claims made in the recently published video are not true,” that voice is processed only when someone holds the remote’s microphone button or an enabled wake-word feature hears its phrase, and that audio it does not recognize is processed locally and deleted. LG did not dispute the network scanning. It called that a standard function of smart televisions.
You do not have to decide who is right to act. Both accounts agree on what matters for a family: the television is a networked computer with a microphone and a view of everything you watch, and its defaults favor the manufacturer.
Is my smart TV listening to me?
Only when voice features are on, according to the manufacturers. But a modern smart TV does more than listen: it fingerprints what is on the screen for advertisers, maps the other devices on your network, and stays a running computer in standby. Five settings turn most of that off, and one network change limits what is left.
Why this isn’t a one-off
If this were LG’s first bad week, you could wait for the patch and move on. It is not. In 2026 alone:
- May: LG settled with the Texas attorney general, who had sued five TV makers in December over automatic content recognition, the feature that fingerprints whatever is on the screen to build a viewing profile for advertisers. LG agreed to a clear disclosure and an opt-out.
- July: the security firm Spur found that more than four in ten apps in LG’s TV app store quietly turned the set into a relay for strangers’ internet traffic, as Krebs on Security reported that month; LG said it would suspend apps that kept the feature. Our earlier piece on the living-room computer covers that one.
- Also July: LG’s PC monitors began installing an ad-serving app through a routine driver update. Security Now (Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte) discussed it, and Gibson’s reaction was the right one: “A PC monitor should not even have a ‘privacy policy!'”
- September: the investigation above.
Four incidents, one pattern, and nothing in the guidance below depends on the logo on the bezel.
What’s at stake
The room is the product. A microphone that can be live while the screen is dark sits in the room where the family argues about money and takes the call from the doctor. Even if only voice commands are transcribed, as LG insists, the transcripts sit on a device with unpatched remote-access bugs.
The TV knows what else you own. A list of every phone, laptop, printer, and thermostat on your network, plus the neighbors’ Wi-Fi names, is a map of your household. Advertisers want it to tie the TV to the phones in the room. Anyone who breaks into the TV gets the same map.
None of that is a catastrophe on its own. All of it is uncertainty you are carrying for no benefit, and the point of this work is to put uncertainty down.
The guidance: fifteen minutes with the remote
Menu names shift between brands and model years, so treat these as agreements to find in the TV’s privacy and user-agreement settings. The manufacturer’s current documentation is the map, and Consumer Reports keeps a plain-language walkthrough for every major brand.
- Turn off content recognition. LG’s agreement is called Viewing Information and the feature Live Plus; other makers call it ACR, Viewing Data, or Smart Interactivity. Off.
- Turn off voice. Decline the voice-information agreement and disable voice recognition and any always-listening wake word. If the household never talks to the TV, there is no reason it should be able to hear.
- Decline the advertising agreements. Interest-based and cross-device advertising, ad tracking, and “do not sell my personal information.” These are the switches that stop the TV from being matched to the phones in the room.
- Install the firmware update, then re-check steps 1 through 3. Updates fix the remote-access bugs. They also have a habit of asking for consent again, with the box pre-ticked.
- Move the TV to your guest network, with the other smart gadgets, and keep phones and computers on the main one. Now the TV’s map of your household is a map of other gadgets. The router side of that, the guest network and the settings worth turning off, is its own piece.
Quick reference
- Off is not off. A smart TV in standby is a running computer with a microphone.
- Five settings: content recognition off · voice off · advertising agreements declined · firmware updated, then re-check · TV on the guest network.
- Or: a television does not need the internet to show a picture. Leave the set offline and stream through one small box you control and keep updated.
- Record it. In the FIRM System, the family’s device inventory in the Family Guide lists which TVs exist and which network each is on. Which agreements you declined goes in the Secure Guide with the rest of the device’s setup.
The takeaway
The team that spent months inside these televisions landed on a blunt recommendation: unplug the set from the internet and use a separate streaming box. You may not go that far, and you do not have to. What you cannot keep doing is treating the thing on the wall as furniture — it is a computer someone else configured, in the room where your family does its living, and its defaults were chosen by a company that this year alone settled with a state, warned the apps in its own store, and was caught pushing ads through a monitor. Fifteen minutes with the remote tonight buys back a room that was never supposed to be for sale.
If you want to know where the rest of your family’s system stands, the free Recoverability Self-Assessment takes about ten minutes and tells you which area to start with.