I’d love to see a guide about how to remove the microphones from the tv. I’m not brave enough to just open up my TV hoping I can find all the bugs in it.
Just change your wifi password and never let it online ever again
Putting tape over it or glue in the hole is probably far easier to manage for the average person, without destroying the remote in the process. 😅
That doesn’t work, though. Sound will penetrate that fairly easily. It’ll be muffled slightly, but not enough to do anything.
Probably would do little to prevent it from listening though.
Or … just don’t connect your TV to the internet.
Except they can still scan for and communicate with any nearby BT/WiFi connections, and some sets even have 4G/5G modems embedded now.
Vlan-ed it years ago, running on some old 2021 firmware. And it so snappy and clean. (I only use Wake On Lan for the TV, to sync up with the PC)
Does your cellphone have a hardware cutoff on it?
Edit: I can see that privacy larpers, like fantasy larpers, hate when you break their immersion.
yes, basic Grapheneos feature.
While a great feature, that’s not a hardware cutoff, that’s a software cutoff. But, still, my software cutoff is turned off for both camera and for microphone. Great feature.
Graphene OS is great. I’m glad to hear that you have it. However, that is not a hardware cutoff, and graphene OS does not rewrite the firmware on chips that are deeply embedded into the physical hardware networks of the mic and GPS. Only a physical cutoff to these two systems can hope to stop illicit telemetry and recording.
I’m not trying to poopoo everyone robbing Google and MS and Apple and LG and Roku and every corp of their revenue streams. Fuck the corps!
The vibe of posts like these though is usually one of removing tracking and spying, not revenue streams. So I think it’s important to remind everyone how deep they will have to go to genuinely limit their attack surface.
Honestly these days, I don’t think it’s crazy to see data collection for advertising as spying. The same system that identifies your advertising demographic can also likely identify political enemies.
And in this timeline? I don’t like those odds.
I know my efforts can never be perfect, but I don’t think it’s crazy to pursue as much as one can
Advertisement has been datamining ever since Google and Facebook figured out how to monetize their markets and is at this point, old enough to drink in the US. Absolutely not something recent.
That’s a software one
is this a “the best time to plant a tree” thing or is there something particularly terrible about today and tv microphones
GamersNexus just dropped a pretty damning video on LG’s data collection practices. Their TVs record absolutely everything from their microphones and cameras (if equipped - some are), sniff out everything using wifi and bluetooth within its vicinity, and sends it ALL back to LG. It does this even when the TV is “turned off”, storing the data until it’s reconnected to the internet. And yes - that includes the remote’s microphone.
My theory is that this is why modern “smart” TVs end up grinding to a halt after a short-ish period of time when not connected to a network. Data just sits and fills up the internal storage until there’s no more space for other processes to function. This happened to a Vizio we bought recently - I ended up factory resetting it and suddenly it worked perfectly. Never connected to the network.
This is a known feature that is not hidden which is not automatically turned on by default.
You must set your TV to a different standby mode and enable LG voice control.
When you do this, it very plainly tells you that it can listen with the screen off so you can control the TV with voice.
Failure of User Awareness, not some nefarious spyware.
This is a known feature that is not hidden which is not automatically turned on by default.
You must set your TV to a different standby mode and enable LG voice control.
When you do this, it very plainly tells you that it can listen with the screen off so you can control the TV with voice.
And you believe that? Don’t simp for billion-dollar companies, they don’t need your help.
It’s time to call it what it is. Spying.
And you believe that?
I don’t have to, I can verify with my own hardware that the data is only sent after enabling the option in question, and stops when disabled.
And what about when they update the TOS again and conveniently switch those back on? And maybe even move the opt-out settings to another hidden location, or remove them entirely? Because that’s absolutely a thing that happens.
I don’t trust any of this shit anymore. You do you, but I refuse to allow any more companies reaching into my house to siphon whatever they can get their greedy hands on.
data privacy
Hey LG, if you’re listening, where the hell is my remote?
I remember Samsung did this on my TV with a talk function in the remote. This was a 2012-model. So it’s technically not new that companies do this, but what LG has done here worries me.
I’ve got one myself now, but I live in bumfuck nowhere, and have blocked the MAC address for the TV. Got an HTPC connected it with Jellyfin and the whole shebang.
Oh don’t worry. These tech companies pretty much all do this. If the TV’s aren’t listening and even watching us. It are our iOS and Android based smartphones and watches. Our in home smart cloud connected “security” camera’s. Our ‘smart’ doorbells, fridges, ovens. Our Windows/Macbook laptops. Our cars.
We’re already long passed the dystopian threshold.
The worst part is, the vast majority of people chose for this and socially shunned people that never opted in for this 1984 bullshit.
LG is nothing, last year Apple settled for spying on their users. Nobody cared. Facebook has been charged for this, multiple times, nobody cares considering the popularity of Whatsapp and Instagram to this day. Everybody goes wild about the new iPhone, haha, it’s an absolute privacy nightmare that’s spying 24/7.
LG is just a popular target now because they’re Asian.
