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LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

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Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#171

Post by felixgallo »

bryan0 wrote: post #121

> "LG TVs process voice data only when the voice button on the remote control is pressed and held, or when a wake word such as 'Hi LG' is recognized after the user has activated the Far-Field voice recognition feature." > LG went on to say that beyond the aforementioned instances, "the TVs do not collect or record ambient conversations." LG is contradicting themselves here. In order to detect a wake word then they mu…

I don't know how LG is doing it, but I suspect that they are taking the same approach for wakewords as Alexa does/did. When I worked for Alexa, it was public knowledge that we used relatively inexpensive and low power chips dedicated to wakeword detection, and those would wake up the main chips if they believed that they heard the wakeword. To my understanding, we did this because doing cloud-based wakeword detection was considered incredibly expensive and wasteful, and there are vendors with pretty decent and inexpensive wake word detection chips.

Then, when the system was more awake, it would attempt to figure out whether the wakeword was real or not (e.g. sometimes certain words and word pairs have a very similar sonic signature to 'Alexa'), and if it felt confident enough then it would begin streaming audio to the back end for significantly improved voice recognition.

Since Amazon took (and as far as I know still takes) voice privacy incredibly seriously, voice recordings and data were treated as essentially radioactive waste, deleted as soon as legally possible, and secured against even internal Alexa developer access.

I personally don't have the same level of confidence in security with LG, who seem to think they don't have as much to lose as far as customer trust goes and might as well exploit the heck out of the systems they have. I suspect that problem, which Amazon has so far pretty successfully avoided for the most part, is self-correcting over time.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#172

Post by alt227 »

al_borland wrote: post #6
gus_massa wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything was opt-in Opt-in used to mean that it was disabled until you explicitly click somewhere to enable it.

I probably should have said "everything was already enabled"... Opt-in/out was on the mind, and neither seemed like the right wording to convey that the choice was already made for me in the wrong direction.... I was opted in automatically.

It was enabled when you accepted the terms and conditions when you first turned it on, or did a firmware update. LGs statment says this:

> ACR is an optional feature that is turned off by default. To enable ACR, a user must accept LG’s Viewing Information Agreement, which describes how ACR works.

Which I take to mean that when you agree to the terms, it enables the feature.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#173

Post by Klathmon »

oceansky wrote: post #133
mordae wrote: post #38

Remember that one time when music CDs from Sony MBG installed a rootkit on your PC that continuously sent whatever MP3s you had on your PC back to them?

First time hearing of this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

As the saying goes, this is what radicalized me. If any one of us did anything close to this we would be treated like Aaron Swartz and given a 35+ year prison sentence.

But in the Sony case the DOJ didn't even threaten criminal charges.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#175

Post by seemaze »

ygjb wrote: post #49
seemaze wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who hasn’t owned a television in decades, why would a TV even need a microphone in the first place? How many other household devices have a microphone whose primary function is orthogonal to recording audio?

There are lots of good reasons that are used to paper over the abuse cases. Microphones in tvs are a useful accessibility feature when they enable voice commands for the user, and allow them to be used as voice assistants. They also enable tvs with a camera and microphone to be used as video calling or audio calling interfaces. Used well we get star Trek view screens, used poorly we get little brother monitoring. For…

Are there any useful resources for finding devices that don't have surveillance apparatus built in?

I'm still not purchasing a television. The last thing I need is more screen time in my life.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#176

Post by alt227 »

Silhouette wrote: post #118
ZoneZealot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically when you turn the TV on for the first time, ACR is not enabled. Ergo, not enabled by default. Sure, to use the TV you need to go past the EULA screen. And the button right in front of you, pre-selected - is agree to all terms. And after pressing OK, you now have ACR turned on. But you did that, it wasn't on by default. Okay I can take my soul sucking corporate hat off now.

Sure, to use the TV you need to go past the EULA screen. And that's where the problem is. TVs should be TVs. Phones should be phones. Cars should be cars. If the manufacturers can't help themselves adding other stuff that is for their own benefit and not the product owner's and some of it so bad that it needs legal weasel words to CTA and competition in the market is insufficient to kill these practices off then it's…

On LG TVs there are about 5 separate agreements you need to accept. You dont need to accept them all to use the tv, but in the initial setup LG puts a handy 'Accept All' button front and center, which agrees to all 5 incrluding the unnecessary ones and turns on the ACR feature. This is the dark pattern most people are pissed about.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#177

Post by ulyssys »

semiquaver wrote: post #116
hdgvhicv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many misunderstandings about that video. Which ain’t surprising as it was longer than a movie and mainly nonsense about what it can do rather than what it does do.

Agreed. I’ve come to believe that the video’s benefit from bringing awareness to the issue is outweighed by how misleading it is. Massive amounts of the video were “we hacked the TV and made it do [bad thing]” and was reported as “LG TVs do [bad thing]!”

Disclaimer: I haven’t yet watched the video, but on the point of security: yes, when data is collected without my clear approval and full understanding, and is not done in a secure way, it matters all the more.

It’s of little concern to me that the threat is theoretical when it’s only a matter of time before a script kiddy or some bored guy with a YouTube tutorial and $20 of AI credits sets it up himself, let alone well-funded groups or motivated actors.

Unmanaged IOT devices in general are not to be trusted. LG isn’t leading with transparency nor are they big enough like Microsoft or Apple to put out bug bounties and audits with hundreds of thousands of eyeballs on them. They make the device that sits in the corner of your living room and is forgotten about. They’re being cagey about the data they collect and how they collect it, and I’m asked to take the risk on “trust me bro” and “you’re required to tell anyone within earshot of the TV’s mic that they’re being recorded”? Fuck that.

Never mind that data being exposed even if encrypted is a risk all its own: the collection can start now, and whenever it’s detected and blocked it’s too late. It can be cracked later whenever they have the tech and the time.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#178

Post by beached_whale »

Wistar wrote: post #144
BeetleB wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So they are claiming that ACR is done entirely through audio processing, and no visual data from the screen itself is used? That...doesn't seem plausible. It apparently is. Do you know the Nielsen Ratings? That's exactly how they know what people are watching these days. I've been contacted by them to be one of their subjects. They ship you a device that listens and recognizes based on content. They look for certai…

The Shazam app on my wife’s iPhone can identify TV shows and movies very quickly, sometimes nearly instantly. Not sure how it does that.

It is pretty neat and several resources online explaining it but it chunks the recoding and does a hash of the fft of each frame i think which reduces the data a lot. The server has a pre hashed database https://hackernoon.com/how-shazam-works-in-a-nutshell

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#179

Post by fn-mote »

ethagnawl wrote: post #95
Koshcheiushko wrote: post #79

I've one question: I've used android phone (realme, which is chinese). And i remember that whenever we used to discuss somethings among our friends, i started used to get ads realated to that on my laptop, phone within atmost a hour. So, was realme transcribing all conversations and uploading it? Can someone answer?

People always dismiss this as FUD but it's been happening to me more than ever. I know in many cases it is more likely that firms are acquiring purchase histories and location data but that doesn't explain other incidents. For example, last week I was complaining to my spouse about shoulder pain and how I was afraid I may need another surgery. YouTube has suddenly starting flooding my feed with videos about "shoulder…

The alternative explanation is that your spouse searched up something related to your situation.

That’s the next possibility to eliminate.

I am positive I get ads based on the interests of other people the wifi where I live.

Re: LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true'

#180

Post by varispeed »

rpdillon wrote: post #18

LG's statement: > ACR uses audio fingerprinting technology using the TV’s internal audio processor (not a speaker) to identify content and does not collect screenshots, screen recordings, video recordings, voice recordings, or other audio recordings from the TV. So they are claiming that ACR is done entirely through audio processing, and no visual data from the screen itself is used? That...doesn't seem plausible. Th…

The key problem is content identification, not how it is done. Seems like they are doing "look over there!" thing.
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