Today, LG admitted that it’s been spying on its own customers and promised it would stop.
Too bad no one’s buying it.
Rather, six out of the 100 people we polled are buying it. (We suspect these people are either happy children, Fox News viewers, or LG employees. God bless ’em.)
LG accomplished the corporate-consumer espionage by tracking Smart TV viewing data — even when the relevant features had been turned off by the user. The company has also been accused of tracking personal data and file names along with information such as viewing habits and broadcast sources.
LG issued a statement today promising to roll out a firmware upgrade to fix the glitch and eliminate unwanted spying for viewers who switch off certain Smart TV features.
However, we speculated that the new firmware would merely make the data-mining harder to expose. And according to a quick poll we conducted today, it seems our readers would agree.
Around 80 percent of our respondents said they didn’t believe LG would actually stop spying on its Smart TV owners regardless of the company’s statements to the contrary. Around 14 percent said they weren’t sure they could trust LG’s word on that subject.
And just 6 percent said they believed the company.
“Oh, no! I have an LG refrigerator … Let’s hope they are not collecting that data!” quipped one of our Twitter followers. “Joking aside, this is ridiculous of LG.”
Couldn’t agree with you more, pally!
Now all we have to do is stop buying LG’s sets and other “smart” TVs and over-the-top devices that track our viewing. Also all the apps that monitor what we watch, like Netflix and Hulu. And the social media posts we fire off every time someone dies in Game of Thrones.
Guess it’s time for a trip to the library, huh?
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