About LG: Life's Grungy

The latest spy film comes from LG (formerly Life’s Good) and is called 'The Spy Who Loved My Data'.

You’d think a TV manufacturer would know the difference between an input and an output, given that the telly has traditionally been a classic output device. However, those days seem to be over – at least as far as LG is concerned – as these very same TVs apparently process more data than they display on the screen.

The Double Market

A spectre is haunting the business world: the dual market.
A euphemism for the desire to charge customers twice or even three times over. Hardware revenue at one end and data revenue at the other. And, in between, subscription revenue too.
Yes, dear tech manufacturers, profit margins have become tighter. On the other hand, this applies to any technology that the average consumer no longer regards as ‘magic’. That is why innovation is so important: because what was a cash cow yesterday is now nothing more than cheap mass-produced goods. Flat-screen TVs with OLED and all that – old hat. Please come up with something new.

Fingers  in the cookie jar

Now LG has been caught – using every trick in the book (#Wireshark) – with its ‘televisions’ not only snooping on all devices on the Wi-Fi network, but also activating the microphone, even though the television is supposedly in ‘standby’ mode.
In other words: Your modern LG TV is a nasty little bugging device. Installed to display adverts on all your devices whenever possible – the dual market, in other words.

Conclusion

It seems that human greed knows no bounds. At the very least, your private network does not appear to be one of them.
Consequently, the only solution is to exercise control, as the linked article suggests: “The team’s recommendation was to simply disconnect LG sets from the internet and use external streaming devices instead”.  

s3n🧩net wishes good luck with a different TV