LG TVs caught spying even when offline or on standby

I wish there was some regulation that would force TVs to have a "dumb" mode. When the colors on our previous living room TV started to go out my dad ended up buying a new huge Vizio during black friday for really cheap. He left it to me to set up, since I'm the tech guy of the family, as you all probably understand.

I was surprised that the first thing I was prompted to do was to download an app and sign up for an account. The TV would not work unless I was signed in (or at the very least the option was so well hidden I didn't see one). Of course the sign up asks for PII like my name and phone number.

Vizio was bought out by Walmart a while back, with the intent of expanding Walmart's advertising empire.

It's really unfortunate that the TV market has ended up the way it has. My family still has a few CRTs going that have been working every day for decades, just turn it on and TV immediately starts playing. I miss that level of simplicity.

The Koreans are taking a huge risk destroying the trust they've built over the last 30 years with this incessant spying and adware. Both LG and Samsung are engaged in this and it could open the door to Chinese rivals like TCL and HiVision. Not because they're much better but because discoveries like these will leave a bad taste in people's mouth whenever they want to buy a new TV.

They need to put a stop to this or they'll start losing market share fast.

Can this spying and tracking be so lucrative that they'll risk alienating their customers over it?

The fact they they can connect to Xfinity networks without consent is shocking too. For all those “just don’t connect the cable” responses, it still connects! And what happens when they go GSM?

Sure you can try to open up the box and yank the WiFi antenna… until it is so deeply integrated into the board that you cannot.

This isn’t just an “oh well” situation. This needs a law.

Is there anyone who has done a technical write up and investigation into the firmwares?

Like reverse engineering how the software on the TVs work.

Also what third parties are involved.

I have a feeling there must be some third party vendor selling the same toolkit that manufacturers use.

Would be nice to figure out if it's possible to send junk data to the endpoints.

> In July this year, the channel flagged that some LG monitors were automatically installing an app that collected device data and ran pop-up ads for LG’s other apps and even McAfee antivirus. The public pressure from that video prompted an intervention from Microsoft, and ultimately led to LG disabling the pop-up ads.

Can anyone explain why Windows even makes this possible? I had to fight against Windows installing Alienware command center nonsense automatically because I have a "gaming" Dell OLED. Windows automatically fetched and installed it just from plugging in the monitor, adding a new system tray icon and persistent daemon with these kinds of annoying pop-ups and probably a bunch of security vulnerabilities.

It's completely incomprehensible to me. The monitor works great without it, on both Windows and Linux! I left a negative review on an otherwise good monitor as a result, but Microsoft shouldn't even be entertaining this crap.

All smart TVs should be disconnected from the internet. Use an AppleTV or similar.

Is there some way to jailbreak your tv and run som open source os on it? Or something like that?

Not exactly sure what I’m after, but the problem is acute and widely prevalent, so there has to be some solution.

https://archive.is/zmCOd

To me this is where the EU MEPs should place their privacy concerns. Unless it ends up being another consent pop up on TVs.