LG’s Smart Televisions and Displays Are Rotten ⇥ youtube.com

Michael Crider, PCWorld:

[…] So somebody at LG decided that, in addition to the basic monitor driver and management app delivered to its users via Windows Update, it would slip in an additional program, “LG Monitor App Installer.” This extra bit of software includes McAfee, or an ad for it — as if there was any difference.

C. da Costa, Gadget Review:

This is bigger than one bad app. LG and Samsung smart monitors run the same operating systems as their smart TVs — webOS and Tizen — both already built for automatic content recognition and ad targeting. Acer’s monitor privacy policies permit sharing device data with advertisers. The trajectory mirrors the rise of free-to-play gaming: low barrier to entry, monetization creep once you’re locked in.

These findings were based on a Gamers Nexus investigation in July. But it is not an isolated incident.

This week, Gamers Nexus followed up with another blockbuster showing how LG’s smart televisions find other devices on the same network and, in some cases, record their activity; and, because they can recognize what is being played onscreen, LG tracks everything you watch, too. It is presumptively allowed do this because it presents a bunch of user agreements that anyone can bypass without reading, enables tracking by default, and buries all the opt-out stuff. Oh, and there is more.

Scharon Harding, Ars Technica:

The video also demonstrated an LG TV’s ability to record sound around it, even when the TV isn’t online.

“We were even able to capture microphone audio while the TV was unplugged from the network. Burke said the audio was reportedly stored locally via plaintext, which could potentially allow the data to be sent to LG [if] the TV connects online again.”

LG told Harding it is only listening for the wake word, but Gamers Nexus was able to capture audio in a variety of different ways because there are so many microphones and, in many cases, so many vulnerabilities in LG’s software. If I had one criticism, it is that Gamers Nexus connects the voice recording and transcription to LG’s ads service — an apparently real-life version of the conspiracy theory. I do not think there is not enough evidence to support that, even as speculation.

The transformation of seemingly every major company into, ultimately, vendors for advertising is an outcome basically everyone hates. The televisions tested by Gamers Nexus are thousands of dollars in Canada. That exchange of money used to be where the relationship ended, assuming the product did not need servicing. Now, though, selling ads on the screen itself prints so much money that it is nearly impossible to buy something different. You cannot vote with your wallet when advertisers are paying more.