Oct 15, 2026 · 14 min · 5 segments
A YouTube channel called Gamers Nexus recently took a deep dive into how much data LG collects from its TVs about your viewing habits and even ambient conversations in the room. This has sparked a…
Um, I'm gonna be posting a lot of links to s- uh, websites on this show in the show notes, um, so that you can go check it out for yourself.
According to their testing, the LG G5 captures and stores anything and everything it picks up with its onboard microphone, even ambient conversations.
So even when you're not saying to the T- giving voice commands to the TV, it's recording things that you might ev- be talking about in earshot.
And that's even if you're not connected to the home network, the TV is not connected to the home network, even if it's turned off.
Actually, it samples that content once every second or two or three or whatever, um, and takes that data and creates what they call a fingerprint of what you're watching.
The information is encrypted, so even computer experts might not always be able to decode exactly what data are being sent.
Now [coughs] the umbrella term for this activity, process is called automatic content recognition, or ACR.
Ostensibly, ACR is used to recommend content similar to what you've been watching.
Um, so that seems innocuous enough, but much more important to the manufacturer, it helps them target advertising based on what you watch.
They operate on what's called a razor-thin margin, and they might even lose money.
But the manufacturers more than make up for that by selling the data they collect from you and from millions other, of others to advertisers.
Uh, the GamersNexus report cited something like 216 million TVs [laughs] uh, that are doing this.
Now, in response to the GamersNexus report, LG vigorously denied that that's what they're doing.
Um, but the GamersNexus report clearly demonstrated what, [laughs] what they're doing.
Um, I'm gonna be posting a lot of links to s- uh, websites on this show in the show notes, um, so that you can go check it out for yourself.
According to their testing, the LG G5 captures and stores anything and everything it picks up with its onboard microphone, even ambient conversations.
So even when you're not saying to the T- giving voice commands to the TV, it's recording things that you might ev- be talking about in earshot.
And that's even if you're not connected to the home network, the TV is not connected to the home network, even if it's turned off.
Actually, it samples that content once every second or two or three or whatever, um, and takes that data and creates what they call a fingerprint of what you're watching.
The information is encrypted, so even computer experts might not always be able to decode exactly what data are being sent.
Now [coughs] the umbrella term for this activity, process is called automatic content recognition, or ACR.
Ostensibly, ACR is used to recommend content similar to what you've been watching.
Um, so that seems innocuous enough, but much more important to the manufacturer, it helps them target advertising based on what you watch.
They operate on what's called a razor-thin margin, and they might even lose money.
But the manufacturers more than make up for that by selling the data they collect from you and from millions other, of others to advertisers.
Uh, the GamersNexus report cited something like 216 million TVs [laughs] uh, that are doing this.
Now, in response to the GamersNexus report, LG vigorously denied that that's what they're doing.
Um, but the GamersNexus report clearly demonstrated what, [laughs] what they're doing.
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