A UK blogger known as DoctorBeet reported his LG smart TV apparently collecting usage information, in effect spying on him, under the guise of better targeted advertising to be shown on the “dashboard” of his LG smart TV.

The adverts prompted him to start capturing the network traffic flowing from his TV and investigate further.

This traffic analysis yielded that his smart TV is transmitting:

• The channel he is watching, every time his changes to a different channel.
• The names of media files stored external USB storage connected to the smart TV.
• A unique identifier.
• This traffic not encrypted. ( i.e. in the clear.)

Even more alarming, when disabling the “collection of watching info” by changing the setting to OFF, a menu option conveniently lacked an explanation bubble in the smart TV configuration interface, changes a field from 1 to 0 in the flow of data.

This indicates the user does not want to be tracked, but the traffic is still sent.

Further sleuthing revealed some marketing material, used for potential advertisers that he classified as “creepy” and after reading it, I would concur.

As usual the emphasis is based on what an amazing advertising platform smart LG smart TV’s are and very little is said on what and how is collected on LG smart TV owners.

DoctorBeet contacted LG and was basically told that having agreed to the terms and conditions, they were off the hook.

Read the Full Article: Source – Malware Bytes
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/online-security/2013/11/snoopy-lg-smart-tv-spies-on-you/

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