LG Smart TV Privacy Lockdown — ACR, Mic and Network Scanning

Why the menu is not enough

Every setting above is a promise from the same software that was found capturing audio in standby. A toggle can be renamed, moved or reset by an update; the investigation's core finding is that the device's behaviour and its stated behaviour diverged. So treat the settings as a first layer and the network as the real control.

Option A — isolate the TV on its own segment

If your router supports VLANs or a guest network with client isolation, put the TV there alone. Client isolation stops it seeing your phones, laptops and watches, which removes the network-mapping behaviour outright. If you want the TV to reach the internet for its own apps but nothing else in your home, that is enough. Plan the ranges with the subnet calculator: a /26 for IoT is plenty.

Option B — block its WAN access and use an external streamer

The researchers' recommendation and ours for anything you cannot isolate. In the router, assign the TV a fixed IP and add a rule denying it outbound internet. Then plug in an Apple TV, a Chromecast, a Fire stick or a small PC over HDMI and use the TV as a panel. You lose LG's apps and keep everything else, and a device with no route out cannot upload what it recorded.

Option C — never connect it

If the TV has never been on your Wi-Fi it has never phoned home. New sets prompt hard for a connection during setup; skip it. The cost is losing firmware updates, which is a trade many people will take.

Samsung, Sony, Roku and the rest

The investigation was LG-specific and we are not extending its findings to other brands without evidence. What is documented across the industry is ACR: Samsung, Sony, Vizio and Roku all ship it under different names and all default it on. The network-isolation advice above applies to any smart TV regardless of brand, and it is the only measure that does not depend on trusting the vendor's menu.

How to verify the TV is actually isolated

Settings and router rules are claims. Verify them from a phone or laptop on your main network, then from the TV's segment, in about ten minutes.

# From a laptop on the main network: can you see the TV?
ping -c 3 192.168.20.15          # the TV's fixed IP on the IoT segment
# You WANT this to fail if you chose full isolation, or succeed only via
# the reverse proxy / cast port you deliberately allowed.

# From the IoT segment (a phone joined to it): can the TV's neighbours see your devices?
# Install a network scanner app, scan the segment: it should list ONLY the TV and the router.

# If you run Pi-hole or AdGuard Home: filter the query log by the TV's IP.
# With WAN blocked you should see attempts and no answers; that log is your evidence the block holds.

Repeat the third check a day after any TV firmware update. If the query log for the TV's address suddenly shows successful lookups to advertising or analytics domains, a rule was bypassed or reset and it is time to look at the router, not the TV menu.

One practical note for households that cast from phones: casting needs the phone and the TV to discover each other, which full isolation prevents. The usual compromise is a firewall rule that allows only the discovery and cast ports from the trusted segment to the TV's address, with everything else denied and the TV's own outbound internet still blocked. If your router cannot express that, an external streaming box on the trusted segment with the TV as a dumb panel gives you casting back without giving the TV a route out.

For the alerting side — a message when an isolated device suddenly resolves an outside domain — the Zapier Expert Workflow Builder prompts produce a working Pi-hole-to-phone alert in one sitting.

Quick answers

Does turning off LivePlus stop the microphone?

No. LivePlus is ACR — content fingerprinting. Voice Recognition under AI Service controls the microphone feature. Turn off both.

If I unplug the Ethernet, is the data gone?

The investigation found voice input was stored locally while offline and uploaded on reconnection. Disconnection defers, it does not delete.

Which LG models were tested?

Retail LG OLED models including the G5. The report suggests the behaviour reflects the webOS platform rather than a single model.

What did LG say?

Nothing at the time of writing.

If you manage screens for a small office or a shop, the same five settings and the same isolation apply, with one addition: write down which segment each display lives on and who owns the router rule, because the person who set it up will not be the person who notices when a firmware update quietly re-enables a consent. A one-line entry in the same document that holds your Wi-Fi passwords is enough.

Do the five settings now, then spend twenty minutes in your router putting the TV somewhere it cannot see your phones. If you run a small business with screens in the office, the same isolation applies and your privacy notice should say what those screens collect; our privacy policy generator guide covers the wording and the generator itself is free. For the router and monitoring automation — Uptime Kuma alerts when an isolated device suddenly reaches the internet — the n8n and Make.com Automation Architect prompts are where we started. Every product mentioned is available at wowhow.cloud — pay once, ship forever.