# Anyone have an LG Smart-TV? Possibly privacy concern. LG Smart TVs logging USB filenames and viewing



## MannDude (Nov 19, 2013)

Good read. Kind of creepy that even with the feature disabled, your viewing data is still sent in plain text.

http://doctorbeet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging-usb-filenames-and.html


----------



## drmike (Nov 19, 2013)

WoW!  WTF is wrong with these companies?   Telling consumers too damn bad your opted in.... Even though the opt out in the menu in the set doesn't do a damn thing.


----------



## shovenose (Nov 19, 2013)

I'm not one to be concerned about privacy or consipiracy theories but that is taking it a bit far. Thankfully I always recommend and would only buy a Samsung.


----------



## HostUS-Alexander (Nov 19, 2013)

Thank god I got a Samsung smart TV last month and not the cheaper LG


----------



## MannDude (Nov 19, 2013)

Have you guys checked to see if your 'superior' product is doing the same thing as the LG?

Just because the article doesn't mention other TVs, doesn't mean they're not doing it. It'd be worth investigating, I think.


----------



## nunim (Nov 19, 2013)

I don't believe I have ever had to accept a T&C for a TV or Monitor, as far as I know of. I don't understand why technically savy people buy "SmartTVs". Why not just buy a regular HDTV for a lot less money and spend $50-100 on either an Android TV stick or Roku/Boxxee like product, either way it will be better then a SmartTV.


----------



## fixidixi (Nov 19, 2013)

scary..


----------



## javaj (Nov 19, 2013)

Yeah well, we'll all be chanting: "War is peace yada yada." pretty soon anyway...

And I'm pretty sure the the gov't has backdoored all of these SmartTV's by now anyway. Pretty soon we wont be able to turn them off and will have to wake up for Govt Jumping Jacks at 6am every morning.

But yeah, I don't think you will be able to purchase anything before to long that doesn't have some kind of phoning home _'feature'_ in it somewhere, either for the govt or third party data miners.

I'm sure the powers that be force companies to do this anyway, at least with gov't backdoors, but when it comes to manufacturers it does piss me off to think that if you already purchased an item it seems to be the gift that _keeps on giving indefinitely_ to the original manufacturer.

Its kind of like most things you purchase these days, its like you don't even really own them anymore.


----------



## bpsRobert (Nov 20, 2013)

Samsung is the way to go, their smart TV's are badass.


----------



## Patrick (Nov 20, 2013)

Seems to be getting quite a bit of publicity:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25018225


----------



## InertiaNetworks-John (Nov 20, 2013)

I simply can not stand for this type of data collection. These type of companies need to be shamed.


----------



## scv (Nov 20, 2013)

Data collection built into the TV shouldn't be your only concern (in fact, if you're paranoid enough you should automatically assume any 'smart' product does this). The firmware on these devices is notoriously poorly designed and many models of smart TVs are vulnerable to exploitation. You can make a safe assumption that different models from a single manufacturer will likely share code, so these issues potentially affect entire product lines.

The same issue lies in just about any embedded device - DVRs, wireless APs, cameras, phones, MP3 players, even SD cards. Often security checks are badly implemented, incomplete, or entirely omitted due to {hardware or time constraints, efficiency concerns, ineptitude, laziness}...


----------



## KS_Phillip (Nov 20, 2013)

MannDude said:


> Have you guys checked to see if your 'superior' product is doing the same thing as the LG?
> 
> Just because the article doesn't mention other TVs, doesn't mean they're not doing it. It'd be worth investigating, I think.


My Philips Smart TV doesn't fire off any unexpected network traffic.


----------



## drmike (Nov 20, 2013)

So who is volunteering 2 minutes for a tutorial to sniff your various devices and catch them spying/reporting/up to no good?

Group think time.


----------



## KS_Phillip (Nov 20, 2013)

drmike said:


> So who is volunteering 2 minutes for a tutorial to sniff your various devices and catch them spying/reporting/up to no good?
> 
> Group think time.


Port mirroring on the edge router + wireshark + filtering based on source mac/ip, nuff sed.


----------



## scv (Nov 20, 2013)

Personally, I use an ALIX 2d2 as a passive sniffing box. It boots to a very minimal environment that simply logs pcap files to attached USB storage. You can achieve the same results using any *nix machine with two NICs - just bridge the NICs and capture what passes over the bridge interface.


----------



## InertiaNetworks-John (Nov 20, 2013)

It also said in the article that there were certain domains that you could block, causing it to not be able to send your data off.


----------

