LG smart TVs may be listening even after the screen goes black.
According to a report circulating via Hacker News and originating from Notebookcheck, some LG smart TVs continue logging microphone audio and scanning devices on the local network even when the display is powered off. The report does not name which specific LG models are affected, nor does it identify the researcher or team who ran the tests. It also has not been independently verified by LG or by outside security researchers. As it stands, this is one report, not a confirmed pattern.
The claim lands in a context that already makes people twitchy about smart TVs. Automatic content recognition, which tracks what's on screen to build viewing profiles, has been a recurring sore point for the industry, LG included, and has drawn scrutiny before for collecting data with murky consent. A screen-off audio and network scan, if real, would be a meaningfully bigger step than passive viewing analytics.
Until the affected models are identified and someone else reproduces the findings, treat this as a lead worth watching, not a verdict. A single unverified report is not the same as evidence, and the burden is on further testing, or on LG, to settle which one this is.