Your privacy is at great risk in this era of Internet of things, after revelation of spying backdoor's in Internet routers and Chinese Electric Goods we now have another revelation of spying by LG SmartTV's. Findings made by developer @DoctorBeet revealed how LG is spying on users watching habits including logging of file-names watched by users from there external USB disk drivers as shown below to remote servers. The communication is clearly sending out "unique device ID" (which could be traced back to you) along with the information about what is being watched and too completely unencrypted.
Motive of this data collection practice from LG is to show advertisement to users, here's a tidbit from their policy:
LG Smart Ad analyses users favourite programs, online behaviour, search keywords and other information to offer relevant ads to target audiences. For example, LG Smart Ad can feature sharp suits to men, or alluring cosmetics and fragrances to women.
Furthermore, LG Smart Ad offers useful and various advertising performance reports. That live broadcasting ads cannot. To accurately identify actual advertising effectiveness.
After this revelation and huge coverage by online media, LG has now announced to fix this behavior with an firmware update soon.
Comments
Another reason NOT to get a
Another reason NOT to get a so called "smart" TV... Better just plug your cheap laptop to the TV via HDMI and use that along with a voice recognition software/wireless keyboard and mouse
LG said that its smart TVs
LG said that its smart TVs collect viewing information like channel, TV platform, and broadcast source in order to "deliver more relevant advertisements"
Damn, I've grown to hate that bit of boilerplate. It makes it sound as if "more relevant advertisements" is a benefit to the user, when it's not.
The phrase sounded insulting to me when I first heard it, and it hasn't grown any better.
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