Information appears to be sent back unencrypted and in the clear to LG every time you change channel, even if you have gone to the trouble of changing the setting above to switch collection of viewing information off.
Even more disturbing find was within the packet data dumps. I noticed filenames were being posted to LG's servers and that these filenames were ones stored on my external USB hard drive. To demonstrate this, I created a mock avi file and copied it to a USB stick.
Sometimes the names of the contents of an entire folder was posted, other times nothing was sent. I couldn't determine what rules controlled this.
It would easily be possible to infer the presence of adult content or files that had been downloaded from file sharing sites. My wife was shocked to see our children's names being transmitted in the name of a Christmas video file that we had watched from USB.
So what does LG have to say about this? I approached them and asked them to comment on data collection, profiling of their customers, collection of usage information and mandatory embedded advertising on products that their customers had paid for. Their response to this was as follows:
Good Morning
Thank you for your e-mail.
Further to our previous email to yourself, we have escalated the issues you reported to LG's UK Head Office.
The advice we have been given is that unfortunately as you accepted the Terms and Conditions on your TV, your concerns would be best directed to the retailer. We understand you feel you should have been made aware of these T's and C's at the point of sale, and for obvious reasons LG are unable to pass comment on their actions.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us again.
Kind Regards
Tom
LG Electronics UK Helpdesk
http://doctorbeet.blogspot.ru/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging-usb-filenames-and.html
Assume anything connected to the internet is being tracked and hacked by someone.
TV WATCHES YOU
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