LG has formally apologized to its customers after it was revealed that its smart TVs were allegedly collecting data on viewing habits of customers as well as sending out names of computer video files stored on USB drives in plain text. The company has also revealed that it will issue a patch to resolve the ‘bug’ in some of its smart TVs.
The information was being collected and transmitted despite setting the “Collection of watching info” to “off”. This is the ‘bug’ that LG is seemingly referring to.
LG has claimed that the data is not being viewed by anyone and instead was being used to serve appropriate adverts to consumers.
In an emailed statement to Doctor Beet, who originally revealed the information collection and transmission by LG smart TVs, LG said “We have verified that even when this function is turned off by the viewers, it continues to transmit viewing information, although the data is not retained by the server.”
LG assured that it a firmware update is being developed “for immediate rollout that will correct this problem on all affected LG Smart TVs so when this feature is disabled, no data will be transmitted.”
Samsung on the other hand has took a preemptive step and after investigation has revealed that its smart TVs haven’t experienced such an issue. “All of our smart TVs include industry-standard security safeguards and practices to secure consumers’ personal information and prevent its unauthorized collection or use,” notes AFP.
