Evidence

LG's advertising arm tells marketers it owns the screen.

“In the fact that we have the glass. We own the glass. We own the TV.”

The president of LG Ad Solutions, the LG-owned company that sells advertising built on what LG televisions collect, speaking to an advertising audience.

Open at 3:38

Caveat The video's captions render the name as "Sergey Mata". Serge Matta is the published name of the LG Ad Solutions president. Confirm against LG's own page before printing it.

They describe the data as first-party, and the coverage as everything on the screen.

“Because, you know, we own the glass, and we have first-party ACR data, automated content recognition data. We understand everything that hits the screen.”

The head of research and development at LG Ad Solutions, in the same presentation.

Open at 3:45

Caveat First name given as Justin in the video. Surname not captioned.

The pitch includes knowing who is in the household and following them to their phones.

“We know who's in the LG household. We know which devices are there. We know what you're exposed to on TV, and we know how to extend that reach into mobile.”

From an LG Ad Solutions marketing presentation played in the investigation.

Open at 13:42

Content recognition samples the picture and the sound, and it runs when the set is used as a monitor.

“ACR is automatic content recognition that harvests data from devices like TVs, including screenshots of what the TV is showing and audio snippets coming out of the TV speakers. ACR can also run when the TV is used as a monitor.”

The investigation's own definition, drawn from the platform's documentation and behaviour: audio or video data is turned into a fingerprint and sent to the vendor's servers.

Open at 13:20

What leaves the television is a fingerprint, not a picture file.

Researchers found no evidence that current firmware uploads JPEG or PNG screenshots. A small downscaled frame and a short audio window are hashed on the set, and the hash is what is sent. The set also downloads what looks like a fingerprint database from the vendor's domains. Earlier generations did send more, and it caused a public incident.

Packet capture and firmware analysis Open at 1:48:08

Caveat We include this because it cuts against the scarier version of the story. Anyone saying these televisions upload screenshots of your screen is overstating what current evidence shows.

A television used only as an HDMI monitor still made 44 connections to the content-recognition service.

An LG G3 with the terms accepted, showing nothing but a laptop over HDMI. Across the session it reached 29 different endpoints 107 times, 44 of those to the Alphonso content-recognition service, and sent about 4 MB.

Wireshark, with the switch port mirrored Open at 29:36

A second set, tested the same way, behaved the same way.

A 43 inch QNED 73B used as a plain monitor for about fifty minutes: 22 endpoints, 157 connections, 54 of them to the content-recognition service, 5.2 MB sent.

Wireshark, with the switch port mirrored Open at 29:49

Using the television's own channels multiplied the reporting roughly sevenfold.

The same set over a similar period, this time watching the built-in channels: 60 endpoints, 847 connections, 618 of them to the content-recognition service.

Wireshark, with the switch port mirrored Open at 30:13

A set with no agreements accepted still talked to advertising and customer-data endpoints.

Before accepting anything, over an hour, the set reached eight endpoints including LG's customer data and smart advertising platforms, made 38 DNS queries to LG domains, transferred about 8.9 MB, and repeatedly scanned for nearby devices. No content recognition was observed in this state.

Wireshark, with the switch port mirrored Open at 28:43

The television enumerated at least 38 other devices on the network.

Phones, watches, a 3D printer, thermostats, gateways and staff laptops, found by the set scanning the local network.

Traffic capture and the set's own logs Open at 17:33

Caveat The scan is confirmed. Whether the full device list is uploaded was inferred from encrypted traffic, and a legitimate device-discovery motive is possible. Treat the upload as an open question, not a finding.

One set was estimated to send in the order of 4 GB of content-recognition data a month.

An extrapolation from the measured sessions, described as predominantly text fingerprints.

Open at 21:22

Caveat This is an estimate scaled up from captures of a few hours, not a month of measurement.

The do-not-sell control is off by default and buried before the set is ever connected.

Found in the menus of a television that had not yet joined a network or been shown any agreement.

Open at 22:08

Installing an app raised six agreements with an accept-all button pre-highlighted, when two were required.

The optional four cover viewing information, personalised advertising and related uses. The default action on the remote accepts all six.

Open at 22:51

A researcher decompiling the firmware found a final upload on opting out.

“They do send one final snapshot of all tracking data to Alfonso upon opting out, though, which is pretty dirty of them.”

Described from reading the decompiled firmware rather than from a captured upload.

Open at 23:16

Caveat This comes from code analysis. We have not seen a packet capture of that upload, so treat it as reported rather than measured.

With voice features on, the capture window stays open after you stop speaking.

Following the wake phrase, capture continues until speech and similar noise stop for roughly ten to fifteen seconds. Speech was picked up clearly from tens of feet away in the test building.

Open at 52:14

Caveat This follows a wake phrase or an enabled voice feature. The investigation does not show these televisions recording ambient conversation with voice features never enabled, except through an exploit. We do not claim that they do.

The advertising subsidiary reported roughly $185 million in sales in a single quarter.

Alphonso, the incorporated name behind LG Ad Solutions, in LG's own financial documents for the first quarter of 2026, with about $22 million in profit.

Open at 1:19:41

Caveat Converted from Korean won in the source. Check LG's filing directly before quoting the figure.

For one maker, the platform business is now comparable to the hardware business.

Vizio in 2023: about $1.1 billion from the device group, which includes televisions and sound bars, and about $598 million from the platform group, which includes advertising.

Open at 1:20:39

The executive who says they own the glass settled fraud charges with the SEC in 2019.

Relating to his time at a previous company, with a financial penalty and a ten-year bar from serving as an officer or director of a public company.

Open at 1:14:50

Caveat Verify against the SEC's own order before repeating this anywhere public. It is a serious claim about a named person and it deserves a primary source, not a secondary one.

A researcher examining the logs found content recognition running on an HDMI input.

“Even an HDMI connection was undergoing ACR.”

This is the finding that matters for an office, where the television is usually showing a laptop rather than its own apps.

Open at 19:52

A surgeon raised the patient-information question directly.

“What happens when I'm taking a patient phone call, or I'm doing patient video visits, and there's an LG monitor in the background? How is that patient information protected?”

Asked on camera, unanswered.

Open at 1:35:15

The privacy policy claims information about every device linked to the television.

Quoted from the policy: information about every device linked to the TV, whether a console, a phone or a DVD player, and other connected devices such as light bulbs, switches and appliances.

Open at 1:06:08