LG smart TVs log household data even offline or on standby, Gamers Nexus report claims

What the investigation found

Smart televisions from LG continuously gather information about their owners and their homes and send it back to the company, according to an investigation by the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus reported by The Verge. The research, conducted together with the channel Level1Techs and independent security researchers, involved testing LG OLED sets purchased at retail.

Packet captures reportedly showed the televisions probing the local network for nearby hardware such as phones and smartwatches, while also logging location data and details of Wi-Fi networks within range. According to The Verge, that information was routed to LG Ad Solutions, the arm of the company that handles its advertising business.

Standby recording that survives disconnection

The most unsettling claim concerns the microphone. The Verge reports that the TVs were able to record audio through their built-in microphones while sitting in standby mode. Pulling a set off the internet did not stop the behavior: audio was written to local storage and transmitted once the television regained network access.

That buffering approach means taking a TV offline is not a reliable way to stop collection — it may simply delay the transfer until the device reconnects.

Content recognition reaches beyond apps

The investigation also examined Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), a technique that samples audio and video to identify whatever is playing on screen. On the sets tested, ACR reportedly covered not only apps running on the TV's own smart platform but also content arriving over HDMI and other ports, allowing the television to fingerprint output from consoles, set-top boxes and other external devices.

As The Verge points out, this is far from an LG-only problem. The review outlet RTINGS published its own video explaining how nearly every smart TV manufacturer relies on ACR to build a picture of what people watch.

A recurring pattern for LG

This is the second time this year that Gamers Nexus has put LG's software behavior in the spotlight. In July, the channel reported that certain LG monitors were silently installing software that harvested device information and displayed pop-up advertisements promoting LG's own services and McAfee antivirus. The ensuing backlash drew Microsoft into the matter, and LG eventually switched the pop-ups off.

Why it matters

Televisions occupy the most personal room in the house, remain powered around the clock and are typically always online. If the report's findings hold up, the usual mitigations fall short: standby mode does not suspend microphone capture, and cutting the network connection only queues recordings for a later upload.

The network scanning raises separate concerns, because devices belonging to visitors — a phone or smartwatch detected nearby — can end up in LG's advertising systems even though their owners never interacted with the TV. The ACR findings also narrow a common escape route: someone who plugs in a console or media player specifically to avoid a TV's smart interface may still have that content identified and reported.

The July monitor episode is a reminder that vendor behavior can change under public and partner pressure. If these new claims are independently verified, they are likely to attract similar scrutiny — and they sharpen a broader question about ad-subsidized televisions: whether the discount at purchase justifies a device that keeps observing the room it sits in.