LG smart TVs were caught recording audio in standby mode, and it happened on standard retail units, not hacked ones

Smart TV privacy concerns are not new. Automatic Content Recognition, the technology that samples what's on screen to build advertising profiles, has been documented by researchers for years. What a new investigation from Gamers Nexus adds is a far more invasive picture of what LG smart TVs do beyond ACR, and it lands with unusual technical weight because it comes from a channel best known for rigorous PC hardware testing, not a privacy advocacy group.

What the investigation actually found

Working with Level1Techs and independent security researchers, Gamers Nexus tested several retail LG OLED models, including the G5, using packet captures and firmware analysis rather than relying on LG's own disclosures. Three findings stand out.

First, network discovery. The televisions actively scan the local network using standard device-discovery protocols to identify other connected hardware, phones, laptops, printers, smartwatches, and other smart-home devices, regardless of whether a user ever attempts to pair those devices with the TV. Alongside device inventories, the sets also collected the names and signal strength of nearby Wi-Fi networks and location data derived from network information.

Second, Automatic Content Recognition, branded by LG as Live Plus. This continuously samples on-screen video and audio to build a profile of what's being watched, whether that's a cable broadcast, a streaming app, or content from an external HDMI source like a game console, feeding a data pipeline that terminates at LG Ad Solutions, the company's advertising arm.

Third, and the finding that's driven the most public reaction: standby audio behavior. Researchers demonstrated that a test LG television could continue recording microphone audio while in standby mode. In one demonstration that has since spread widely online under the hashtag #unplugthetv, researchers disconnected a test unit's Ethernet cable, let it sit disconnected, then reconnected it on camera, showing buffered audio upload once the connection returned. It's worth being precise about a detail that matters for anyone trying to protect themselves: this was demonstrated on standard, unmodified retail hardware. It did not require rooting the device or exploiting a security vulnerability to access. The reporting consensus that has formed around this finding is blunt: turning a set "off" with the remote, or disconnecting only the network cable, isn't sufficient to guarantee the hardware is inert, since audio can be buffered locally and simply waits for the next reconnection to upload. Fully unplugging the television from power is described as the only way to guarantee it's inert.

What LG's own footage showed

Part of what gave this investigation its edge wasn't just the technical testing, it was LG's own marketing material. Corporate promotional videos featured within the Gamers Nexus investigation show LG representatives describing the company's data capabilities in strikingly direct terms: "We know who is in the LG household," and "We know which devices are there." Gamers Nexus has characterized the scale of the underlying advertising business built on this data collection as extending to what it describes as 216 million connected LG televisions in the US alone, a figure attributed to the investigation rather than independently verified by other outlets at the time of this report.

How LG has actually responded

LG has issued a detailed public response disputing the investigation's audio-related conclusions while confirming the underlying network-scanning behavior. The company describes scanning and device connection as "a standard function commonly provided by smart TVs and smart home devices," positioning it as ordinary interoperability rather than surveillance. It says its televisions do not collect, record, or transmit ambient conversations unless voice functionality has been intentionally activated, such as by pressing the microphone button on the remote or enabling far-field wake-word recognition.

LG also says that, when far-field recognition is enabled in standby mode, wake-word audio is processed locally, promptly deleted when no wake word is detected, and not transmitted to its servers. Those claims directly contest the researchers' interpretation of the observed logs and buffered data. The network-scanning behavior itself is not in dispute, but the purpose and handling of audio remain contested between LG and the investigators.

Independent commentary on the standby-audio finding has noted there may be more mundane explanations for some of the behavior researchers observed, such as diagnostics or improving speech recognition accuracy, while also pointing out that even those explanations still involve retaining audio recorded from inside people's homes without the kind of clear, informed consent the practice would warrant.

The context that makes this the second LG controversy in two months

This investigation didn't happen in isolation. In July 2026, an earlier Gamers Nexus investigation found that connecting certain LG monitors to Windows 11 PCs could trigger the automatic installation of an LG monitor companion app through Windows Update, without a clear installation prompt, after which the app displayed pop-up advertisements, primarily for McAfee. Microsoft subsequently intervened directly, and LG agreed to disable the McAfee pop-up ads. Read alongside that episode, this month's TV investigation reads less like an isolated incident and more like a pattern in how LG's software teams have handled user consent and disclosure across its connected hardware lineup.

How to actually reduce what an LG smart TV collects

Security researchers and outlets covering this investigation converge on a consistent, if imperfect, set of mitigations, since a full technical fix isn't something an individual user can apply themselves.

Start inside the television's own settings. Look for a menu typically under Privacy & Terms, User Agreements, or General settings, and disable Automatic Content Recognition, branded as Live Plus on LG sets, along with any interest-based advertising and voice-related data collection toggles. Exact menu paths vary by model and firmware version, so check your specific set's current support documentation rather than assuming a single universal path, since LG has changed its settings structure across webOS versions.

Beyond the TV's own settings, network-level isolation is the more durable protection. Placing the television on a separate guest network or a dedicated IoT VLAN limits what it can discover and reach on your primary network, meaning a smart TV that's over-collecting, or one that's later compromised, has far less visibility into your phones, laptops, and other connected devices. Keeping the television's firmware updated matters too, since some of the security weaknesses identified in the investigation relate to how the device handles network communication generally, not solely to ACR or standby audio specifically.

For anyone unwilling to accept the residual risk even with those mitigations in place, the most reliable option researchers point to is the blunt one: don't connect the television to a network at all, and use an external streaming device with its own, separately manageable privacy settings instead, treating the smart TV purely as a display.

The tecMAMBO take

What makes this investigation land differently than the routine, recurring "smart TVs collect more data than you'd expect" story is the specificity, and the source. Gamers Nexus is a channel built on rigorous hardware benchmarking, not privacy advocacy, and its packet-capture, firmware-level methodology is harder to wave away than a general policy critique would be. The standby-audio finding in particular deserves to be read carefully rather than folded into vague "smart TVs are always listening" alarm: this was a specific, demonstrated behavior on specific, unmodified retail hardware. LG disputes the audio-related conclusions while confirming local-network scanning and defending it as standard smart TV functionality.