LG Faces Legal Action Over Smart TV Privacy Concerns
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Consumer advocates in Portugal are asking the courts to investigate LG smart TVs over potential privacy breaches. The legal action comes as recent research shows multiple smart TV brands continue sending tracking data even after owners turn off the settings.
The Portuguese consumer association Citizens Voice filed the request to have the courts investigate what data smart TVs log and where that information goes. The organization wants courts to determine if the data collection breaks consumer rights. It is asking for multiple smart TV models to be taken off sale and for others to receive software updates to protect viewer privacy. Citizens Voice also wants authorities to take action against retailers.
The court filing targets LG's response to recent findings by the technology news site TEK Notícias. That outlet reported that LG's public statements failed to directly explain tests involving audio storage while TVs were offline or named security vulnerabilities in the webOS operating system. LG has denied accusations that it created hundreds of thousands of spy TVs, stating that its voice features only record when activated by the user and that network scans are standard smart TV functions.
However, privacy experts argue that LG's denials do not cover the full privacy picture. Anna Maria Mandalari, an associate professor at University College London who co-authored a study on smart TV tracking, notes that Automatic Content Recognition technology can still operate when a TV serves as an external display for a laptop or game console. She points out that LG's statement only promises that tracking data is not used for advertising purposes without consent, leaving questions about what data is collected, retained, or processed for other reasons.
Similar tracking concerns extend beyond a single brand. A study by researchers at Northeastern University tested 12 commercial smart TVs across major platforms and found that opt-out settings do not always stop tracking traffic. While platforms like webOS, Google TV on Sony, VIDAA OS, and Fire TV fully respected opt-out choices in their tests, other systems showed troubling behavior. Every test run using Samsung's streaming service still showed traffic consistent with tracking despite users opting out, and all opted-out tests on Vizio's platform continued sending data to an Amazon Kinesis server with no decrease.
Because the transmitted data is encrypted, the researchers cannot say with absolute certainty that every packet contains tracking information, though the network traffic matches those patterns. Cobun Zweifel-Keegan of the International Association of Privacy Professionals notes that while this type of data collection is common across the industry, significant differences remain in how companies handle the information they scoop up. For consumers looking to limit tracking, privacy researchers suggest disconnecting smart TVs from the internet and using separate streaming devices that do not run tracking software.
Summary
Consumer advocates are taking legal steps against television manufacturers over data tracking practices. Recent studies show that turning off tracking settings on some smart TV platforms may not actually stop the devices from sending network traffic to servers.