LG Electronics clarified on Thursday that its flagship line of OLED televisions are primarily designed to quietly map residential Wi-Fi networks, though they do retain the legacy ability to output streaming video.
Security researchers recently observed that LG displays running WebOS continuously scan the user's local area network, aggressively identifying third-party smartphones, laptops, and smart home appliances connected to the same router. Rather than denying the background behavior, the electronics manufacturer commended the hardware for its relentless vigilance.
For years, our displays were just sitting in the living room passively rendering pixels while a wealth of third-party network traffic went completely unmonitored.
The manufacturer noted that while rendering high-dynamic-range video requires significant compute, silently compiling a permanent textual record of a user's network topology is highly cost-effective. Emphasizing that it does not cost a lot to store text forever, LG confirmed that the MAC addresses of visiting friends' phones, a teenager's hidden tablet, and the household's smart refrigerator will be archived on company servers in perpetuity.
LG engineers advised customers who are uncomfortable with their television interrogating the home Wi-Fi to simply disconnect the display from the internet, at which point the screen will permanently lock itself until it is allowed to see what the thermostat is up to.