In short: A 500-hour, $70,000 investigation by Gamers Nexus and Level1Techs has confirmed that LG Smart TVs intentionally scan every device on your home network, collect nearby Wi-Fi data, and send it all to LG Ad Solutions. On devices with WebOS vulnerabilities, researchers documented audio recording in standby mode — stored locally and uploaded when internet access is restored. Around 216 million LG TVs worldwide may be affected.
What researchers found
On September 7, 2026, Gamers Nexus and Level1Techs published a 135-minute technical investigation into LG Smart TV behaviour — including the flagship OLED G5 running WebOS. Using Wireshark to analyse network traffic and reverse-engineering firmware components, the team documented exactly what data leaves the device and where it goes. The investigation took more than 500 hours and an estimated $70,000.
The headline finding: LG TVs deliberately scan your entire local network. The device builds a list of connected gadgets — smartphones, smartwatches, laptops, printers, smart speakers, IP cameras, routers — recording their IP addresses and internal identifiers. Simultaneously, it collects the SSIDs of all nearby Wi-Fi networks in range, their signal strengths, and the approximate device location. To understand how network tracking works in general, see our privacy blog.
Advertising over privacy: where your data goes
The home network data feeds into LG Ad Solutions — the company's advertising division. LG itself claims that through this infrastructure it reaches 363 million "secondary addressable devices" in the US alone: the very phones, laptops, and tablets that LG TVs discovered on users' home networks.
On top of that, TVs use ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) technology — creating digital fingerprints of on-screen content and matching them against a database. This lets advertisers track what you watch regardless of source: cable, streaming, or a USB drive. See how your network privacy works on the LiMP VPN features page.
Audio recording in standby
The most alarming finding involves the built-in microphone. Researchers documented that on devices with certain WebOS vulnerabilities, the TV continued recording audio even with the screen off. When the internet connection was absent, audio files were saved locally — and uploaded to a server once connectivity was restored.
Important context from Malwarebytes: this behaviour requires the device to be compromised via a WebOS vulnerability first — it is not a default out-of-the-box feature for all LG TVs. Technical details of the remote code execution vulnerabilities are being withheld pending responsible disclosure; no CVEs have been assigned. As of publication, LG has not commented on any of the findings.
What this means for your home network
A modern smart TV is a full participant in your home network that can see every other connected device by default. Routers, IP cameras, NAS drives, smart bulbs, smartphones — the TV discovers all of them and reports information to its advertising system.
This matters especially for home VPN set-ups. Running a VPN on your router protects the outgoing traffic of connected devices — encrypting it before it leaves your network. But it does not isolate devices from each other inside the local network: LG TV can still discover your VPN router and other devices at the LAN layer, regardless of any VPN tunnel. Protecting against that requires network segmentation.
How to reduce the risk
Isolate your TV on a guest network. Most modern routers support a separate guest Wi-Fi. Move your LG TV and all IoT devices there so the TV cannot see your laptops, phones, and NAS.
Disable ACR. In LG TV settings, find "Live Plus" or "User Agreements" and turn off content recognition. This stops content monitoring but does not stop network scanning.
Block internet access for the TV. If you don't use Smart TV features, block your LG TV at the router level using MAC filtering or firewall rules. Without internet access, collected data cannot be transmitted.
Keep firmware updated. When LG patches the WebOS vulnerabilities, updates will close the audio recording vector — watch for firmware releases.
Protect the rest of your devices. Smartphones, laptops, and tablets running LiMP VPN encrypt their outgoing traffic: even if the TV maps them on the network and data reaches LG Ad Solutions, your actual internet traffic remains encrypted against interception by your ISP or on public Wi-Fi. A VPN is not a substitute for network isolation — it is an additional layer of traffic protection.
Sources
- LG Smart TV records conversations in standby and scans home network — Anti-Malware.ru, September 7, 2026
- LG TV flaws could let attackers listen in, even in standby mode — Malwarebytes, September 7, 2026