LG says your TV isn't listening. A 135-minute video says check what it knows about your Wi-Fi
A long investigation accused LG smart TVs of picking up audio and cataloguing the networks around your home. LG answered in writing. Neither answer gives you a way to check your own living room.
The biggest screen in most homes is also the one nobody thinks about. It sits there, plugged in, connected to the same Wi-Fi as your phone, your laptop and your roommate's speaker. This week it became the subject of an argument that a normal owner has no way to settle.
Gamers Nexus published a 135-minute video, made together with Level1 Techs and independent cybersecurity researchers, claiming LG smart TVs can capture audio recordings even when the TV is asleep or unplugged from the network, and collect things like IP addresses, geographic locations, names of nearby WiFi networks and devices connected to those networks — even devices that were never connected to the TV. A few days later LG published a long response on its own website, saying that "some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work" and that its smart TVs "do not continuously record or transmit user's conversations."
Read both statements slowly and you notice they are not answering the same question. The accusation has two halves: the microphone and the network. LG's published detail is mostly about the microphone — speech-to-text "begins only if a user activates a voice interaction through a supported wake-word feature or by pressing the voice button on the remote control," and voice data wasn't stored for later upload after a TV is disconnected from the internet. That is a clear, specific, checkable-by-engineers denial.
The other half of the accusation is the boring half, and it's the one that would actually follow you around: a list of the networks and gadgets near your home. Nobody sings in front of the TV. Everybody has a Wi-Fi name.
LG also said something most companies avoid saying out loud: "no connected product is ever completely immune from security vulnerabilities, which is why ongoing monitoring, testing and improvement remain important throughout the product lifecycle." That matters, because the Gamers Nexus report argued the collected data has business-to-business value and also creates a risk of exposure to potential exploits or security vulnerabilities. Data that is useful to sell is data worth stealing. Those are the same pile.
The practical part is in one sentence of LG's reply, and it's the part worth writing down: Automatic Content Recognition — the feature that identifies what's on screen — plus voice recognition and interest-based advertising are described as optional features that are turned off by default. Off by default is a claim about the box you unwrapped. It says nothing about the box someone else set up for you: a secondhand TV, a landlord's TV, a hotel TV, a TV your relative configured by clicking Agree on everything.
Anyone renting a flat where the TV is the most expensive thing in the room — and especially people who bought theirs used, or moved into a place where the TV was already mounted and already configured by someone else. Also everyone who shares one router with roommates or neighbours: the disputed claim isn't only about your devices, it's about the names of networks and gadgets around you, including ones never connected to the TV. And parents who put a smart TV in a kid's room without ever opening its settings menu.
LG didn't name a date, an audit, a patch or an outside reviewer in the statement quoted here — it said ongoing monitoring, testing and improvement remain important throughout the product lifecycle. So the honest answer is that no deadline exists yet. What would move this forward is simple to describe and easy to spot: either LG addressing the network-data claims as specifically as it addressed the voice claims, or the researchers publishing a method an ordinary owner can repeat. Until one of those appears, the argument stays exactly where it is.
Both sides sound completely confident, and from the couch they are indistinguishable. That's the real finding here: your TV is the one appliance in your home whose behaviour you have to take on faith from a press statement. The washing machine doesn't ask you to trust it.
Sources: Engadget, "LG denies accusations of smart TVs continuously recording its users," by Jackson Chen, Sept. 12, 2026, citing LG's statement published on its website and the Gamers Nexus report made with Level1 Techs and independent cybersecurity researchers.
Расследование независимых техников утверждает, что телевизор в гостиной собирает голос, IP и имена соседских Wi-Fi-сетей, а производитель это отрицает — и проверить, кто прав, обычный владелец не может.
Written by THE TELL’s AI newsroom. how we work · corrections