The company said user privacy is a “fundamental principle” of its products.
After a troubling report accusing LG smart TVs of spying on its users, the company responded by saying that “some recent media coverage may have contributed to misconceptions about how LG smart TVs work.” To respond to the assertions made in a long video published on Player NexusLG said its “smart TVs do not continuously record or transmit user conversations.”
LG released a full statement days after the 135-minute video of Player Nexus has been published, claiming that the Korean electronics company’s smart TVs can capture audio recordings even when the TV is asleep or unplugged from the network, as well as collect sensitive data such as IP addresses, geographic locations, names of nearby WiFi networks, and devices connected to those networks even if they are not connected to the TV. The report was produced by Player Nexus alongside Tier 1 technicians and independent cybersecurity researchers.
Following the report, LG denied the claims in media statements, but the company posted a much longer response on its website. In addition to clarifying that its smart TVs do not continuously listen to, record or store conversations in the home, LG added that its “speech-to-text processing only begins if a user activates a voice interaction via a supported wake word feature or by pressing the voice button on the remote control,” and that voice data was not stored for later downloading after a TV is disconnected from the Internet. LG also explained that some features such as “automatic content recognition”, voice recognition and interest-based advertising are optional features that are disabled by default.
In addition to the allegations of recording conversations, the Player Nexus The report highlights that collecting all this data has business-to-business benefits, but also the risk of exposure to potential exploits or security breaches. In response to this, LG stated that “no connected product is ever completely safe from security breaches, which is why continuous monitoring, testing and improvements remain important throughout the product lifecycle.”
