claimed that these TVs are capable of continuously collecting information about their users and nearby devices<\/a>.<\/p>\nIt alleged that these \u201cspy TVs\u201d can \u201cpry into your personal life with greater precision than you might realise\u201d and are \u201cable to be utilised as eavesdropping listening devices\u201d in what the report said was an \u201cegregious invasion of privacy\u201d.<\/p>\n
LG hits back<\/p>\n
LG has now hit back at these claims, in a statement saying that many of the claims are incorrect or based on \u201cmisconceptions\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLG Electronics takes customer privacy seriously and is committed to providing clear information and meaningful choices around how our products operate,\u201d LG said in a statement provided to Information Age.<\/p>\n
The company said the claim by the researchers that LG TVs continuously record ambient conversations are \u201cnot correct\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLG TVs process voice data when the voice button on the remote control is pressed and held, or when a recognised wake word such as \u201cHi LG\u201d is detected after the customer has activated Far-Field voice recognition.<\/p>\n
\u201cOutside of these instances, LG TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a wake word is not recognised, no voice data is transmitted to LG servers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAudio processing required for wake word detection takes place locally on the device and the audio is immediately deleted.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company said that its ACR system, which was one of the main focuses of the investigation, is provided on an opt-in basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a customer does not consent to the applicable optional agreement, ACR data is not used for advertising purposes,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe customers should have clear information about these features and control over their privacy choices and we remain committed to transparency around how our connected products operate.\u201d<\/p>\n
LG has also provided a statement on its website about the issue it said is addressing \u201cmisconceptions\u201d about how its smart TVs work.<\/p>\n
The researchers respond to the response<\/p>\n
The original investigator, Gamers Nexus, has now responded to LG\u2019s statement and accused the tech giant of \u201clying\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report stated several \u201cconcerning vulnerabilities\u201d had also been identified in the LG TVs, and that this had been reported through the appropriate disclosure processes.<\/p>\n
This included a remote code execution vulnerability that could allow an attack to take control over certain elements of a TV.<\/p>\n
Gamers Nexus said that LG had not responded to this part of its investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cLG cannot possibly ensure that its TVs do not do these things, considering the gigantic gaping security holes that they still haven\u2019t patched,\u201d Gamers Nexus said in a new video responding to LG\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cLG did not once in this entire pretty long response address our security concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a single reference to how or if they are patching the vulnerabilities that we discovered and security researchers discovered and reported to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The researchers challenged LG to provide evidence that their claims are untrue.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur video contains demonstrations and proofs of concept and tests supporting the claims that we made,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLG is a multibillionaire-dollar corporation\u2026if our claims are false as LG says, then we welcome LG to publish evidence of them being false to the public internet.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, LG resorted to the \u2018fake news\u2019 response to our video and went with denial without any evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LG says it takes customer service seriously. Photo: LG South Korea-based tech firm LG has denied reports that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-891681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}