SEOUL, September 11 — Security researchers have demonstrated that LG smart TVs, including the flagship G5 running webOS, can record audio while in standby mode, map every device on a home network, and route that data to LG’s advertising infrastructure. The findings come from packet captures and bench tests conducted by Gamers Nexus, working alongside Level1Techs and independent security researchers. Gadget Review writer Nikshep Myle published the report on September 7, 2026.
The work was done with Wireshark logs and bench tests, not speculation. Gamers Nexus investigator Steve Burke described what his team saw when they turned the TV loose on their own network.
The set “crawled our entire network and found dozens of unrelated devices, including smartwatches and phones of our staff who didn’t even know we were working on this,” Burke said.
Standby isn’t sleep
Here’s the part that matters for anyone with an LG set in the living room. When the screen goes dark, webOS begins cataloguing every device on the network — phones, smartwatches, laptops, anything with an address. None of it has to be involved in watching television.
The TVs also harvest neighboring Wi-Fi network names and signal strengths. The report describes that as classic location-profiling behavior.
Bench tests confirmed the built-in microphone can record audio in standby with the screen dark under test conditions. Think of it like a houseguest who says goodnight, closes the bedroom door, and then keeps a log of everyone who walks past the window. To the user, standby means the TV is sleeping.
To the TV, standby apparently means the microphone stays active. The report puts it plainly: standby mode is a setting, not a promise.
Every input gets fingerprinted
LG’s Automatic Content Recognition system fingerprints on-screen audio and video across every input, HDMI included. That means even viewing through an Apple TV gets logged. The set doesn’t care which box is feeding it the picture.
Every sweep feeds LG Ad Solutions, the company’s targeted advertising division. That division claims reach to 363 million secondary addressable devices in the US alone, according to its own marketing.
LG has issued no public response to the investigation’s findings. Nikshep Myle has written for Gadget Review for over two years and has also contributed to TechRadar, Tom’s Guide, and Android Police. The image accompanying the report was credited to Flickr user Sinchen.Lin.
The practical upshot for consumers is a question about what the advertising infrastructure behind smart TVs actually does when nobody is watching. The findings raise questions about consumer privacy and data collection that the industry has so far answered mostly through marketing language.
Watch for whether LG responds to the report, and whether the researchers release the underlying packet captures for independent verification.
