The home appliance giant LG Electronics USA said this week it plans to suspend any apps built for its smart TVs that turn one’s television into an always-on residential proxy node. The move comes less than a month after researchers found that more than 42 percent of games and other apps available for download on LG’s webOS store allow unknown third-parties to route their Internet traffic through a user’s TV.
Proxy SDK prevalence among smart TV apps for LG (webOS) and Samsung (Tizen OS) televisions. Image: Spur.us.
On July 2, we featured research by the security firm Spur that examined the prevalence of residential proxy software development kits (SDKs) in smart TV apps. Spur found more than 42 percent of apps available for download on LG smart TVs include SDKs that turn one’s television in a proxy node indefinitely, and that more than a quarter of the apps made for Samsung’s Tizen operating system had similar residential proxy components.
Responding to questions about Spur’s research, LG Senior Vice President John Taylor told KrebsOnSecurity the company was working with app developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform. Developers that fail to comply, he said, will find their apps suspended.
“A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs, and LG Electronics is working with developers to remove the residential proxy option from their apps on the webOS platform,” Taylor said. “If this option is not removed, these apps will be suspended.”
Taylor said LG is committed to keeping residential proxy networks out of its smart TV apps going forward, and that the company’s review of those apps is “well underway now.”
“As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance platform quality and the user experience, LG will continue to strengthen our evaluation process for developer-submitted apps, including those that incorporate residential proxy SDKs,” Taylor wrote in an emailed statement.
App makers looking for ways to monetize their creations can turn to residential proxy providers, which pay developers to include SDKs that turn the user’s device into a residential proxy node that is rented to paying customers. In the case of LG and Samsung smart TVs, Spur found residential proxy SDKs bundled with everything from simple games like Pac-Man to screensavers and file utilities.
A Pac-Man smart TV app from Bright Data offers users the choice between viewing ads in the game or agreeing to allow their TV to serve as a residential proxy node. Image: Spur.us.
Spur’s report found the residential proxy network Bright Data accounted for a majority of proxy SDKs across both Samsung and LG smart TVs. In a statement shared with KrebsOnSecurity, Bright Data said its network is built on consent and responsibility and operates by LG and Samsung terms.
“Every peer opts in through a dedicated screen and receives value in return; every customer is vetted, and our practices have now undergone a second independent audit by PwC,” the statement reads. “We remain committed to an open, transparent internet where legitimate businesses, researchers, and institutions can responsibly access data that lives in the public domain.”
Bright Data and other proxy providers named in Spur’s report all say they follow rigorous know-your-customer processes to validate legitimate uses of their services, which is often heavily tied to content-scraping activities by said customers. The proxy companies also say they incorporate technological countermeasures to prevent proxy service customers from being able to interact with and control other devices on the proxy user’s local network.
Spur argues the problem is not that residential proxy networks exist, but rather that they are being embedded at scale in devices that most consumers do not think of as computers and are not equipped to audit.
“A one-time consent prompt buried in a TV app is not a substitute for meaningful transparency, ongoing control, and platform oversight,” Spur’s Trevor Sutter wrote. “The risk is amplified when consent comes from individuals within the household who use the device but shouldn’t give consent, such as minors.”
LG’s announcement that it is culling residential proxy SDKs from its app store is welcome news, but the company recently came under fire for another questionable partnership: Pimping McAfee security products via software drivers included in its high-end LCD monitors.
Earlier this week, the Youtube channel Gamers Nexus showed that certain LG LCD monitors will automatically install an app that promotes paid McAfee antivirus subscriptions, and that the app arrives through Windows Update without an approval prompt.
Update, July 22, 1:06 p.m. ET: Added statement from Bright Data.
Good – residential proxy providers are scum.
Now if only they’d also stock forcing McAfee on PC users of their monitors via stealth windows updates and kill off the spyware on their smart TV’s that records everything you say and watch etc.
HOW did anyone at LG think ANY of this was ok? Who is being summarily fired RTFN? LG burned all trust and is a month late in merely promising they’ll BEGIN removing the 42% MALWARE TROJANS from their ‘curated’ app store, and they somehow think that’s going to be good enough? This brand is dead to me forever. This wasn’t just an oversight.
why do you think the price is so good?
Back when I was burnt out, I used to, just for fun, do SEO and product reviews of cheap items for a place that bought and sold things in small lots, and one of the things I often got sent to me was devices that acted this way.
While there are some incredibly awful device offenders I came across in my actual career in security, most of them didn’t act nearly as egregiously in-your-face as the newest batches of devices on the market now. I wouldn’t want my WiFi repeaters near anything running code based on that SDK, no less that Pac-Man TV app ad.
> HOW did anyone at LG think ANY of this was ok
I mean they are doing this for 15 years and no one complains? At least not in a way that reduces sales? It sure helps a lot that all other big TV manufacturers are as bad, they all want, at the very least, to spy on you with ACR.
That’s just one of the reasons I don’t buy products made by LG.
LG = Literally Garbage
Oh heavens no, they won’t stop anything that profits them, only things that profit other people that they don’t get a cut of.
A simple solution to scummy data harvesting by TV vendors and their app ecosystems is to not connect the TV to the internet. Connect it to a TV-PC box (home theater PC) instead, where you control the OS and apps that run on it, so you can make it as secure as you want it to be. (Of course that’s moot if you allow family members to install whatever games and other apps they want on it without oversight.)
A perfectly elegant and workable solution and exactly what I’ve done with every “smart” TV we have in the home. They do not get to connect to my network and their device addresses are specifically blocked from ever connecting to the internet at the firewall level, juuuuust in case someone in my family gets suckered into trying to add to the network.
Plug your TV into a Linux distro computer, not a Windows machine. This configuration solves a number of problems in terms of harvesting and privacy. Splitting your ISP bandwidth into multiple networks is also a good idea. If you need assistance with home smart devices, go to aisheriff.io Bring back digital data privacy and consumer protection.
LG UltraGear monitors have a related problem as well. As soon as you plug one into a Windows PC, it silently installs adware. It’s clear this kind of stuff at LG isn’t an accident.
https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/07/21/lg-monitors-are-using-windows-11-feature-to-serve-adware/5275486
Wait, without the user’s clickthru consent to at least upgrade (ie, it isn’t just part of the plugin setup upgrade software shpiel?)
Zero user interaction, facilitated by M$ 11. You can avoid it but by default, it will bomb you with McAfee.
Burke is right, if they sold even one of these in Europe, they are cooked.
and thanks be to BK of course!
Exactly. How was it allowed in the first place? It’s like allowing Trojans in your App Store.
Why i can´t use my device which i fully payed in the way i wish? How come LG feels entitled to limit what i can do with MY device
Much like Amazon does with it’s devices.
Or Google, or Apple or any company.
Much like Apple does with its walled garden devices. Like Google, Microsoft, all of them limit what you can do with your devices. If you don’t like it don’t buy, or install Linux when you can.
Limited also limits what apps you can use.
‘Walled garden’ implies a wall to (purport to) keep malware out, a value addition.
There are obviously levels of integrity and efficacy to evaluate in that value add,
not all companies that have a store they control are handling the situation equally.
mayhaps something like the old chinese dude in the shop that didn’t want to sell the mogwai to the traveling salesman.
Is there a good resource to check if one’s Internet connection is being used as a residential proxy? I just checked with https://whatismylocation.org/proxy-check which says I’m okay, but who really knows?
I have an LG TV, and use a pihole blocklist to at least do some blocking, but LG has a lot more resources than the person maintaining the blocklist.
This is really a horrible development, what is the next peripheral that is going to be installing malware?
you can try https://spur.us/context/me
https://check.labs.greynoise.io/ just learned it. Might just tell you something in your house is problematic.
https://synthient.com/check
Thanks for the help. Great news, I’m boring!
And so is my computer. 🙂
What about VIzio and the other big TV vendors?
Very good question, innocent until caught, then they say “welp maybe we’ll start cracking down…” on the 42%!
I’m a long-time Apple user but a few years ago, I bought a new PC with the Windows 11 OS for a particular reason. It seemed like within minutes of getting it set up and running, a seriously annoying pop-up for McAfee sprang forth, continually bugging me to buy its software. I couldn’t get rid of it, and ultimately I gave the PC to a family member.
It seems to me that ever more these days, we’re being subjected to an onslaught of advertising that is coming at us from all sides. I understand that advertising supports a business and am not against it when used judiciously, but that’s not what we’re experiencing now. It’s being rammed down our throats at every turn, even on the screens in our cars! If I’m paying for a streaming service, I do not want ads either. Stealth adware being installed through monitors or other equipment? Who thinks this is a great idea? Maybe if these companies could understand that people might not object to their ads so much if they weren’t so prevalent, some of us might actually watch them and (gasp) even engage with the advertiser. Currently, I refuse to do any of this.
LOL, the hypocracy. LG wants only THEIR spyware on your TV and whatever you plug that TV into. LG already is violating concent laws for minors with their PC monitors. This is just a story pretending they are the victim and are on our side against horrible things such as internet privacy. How can you possibly say you don’t want our Orange Big Bother watching everything your little girl is doing?
> LG Senior Vice President John Taylor told KrebsOnSecurity the company was working with
You don’t “work with” criminal organizations unless you’re a criminal organization yourself. By not shutting them all down *immediately*, either LG is a bad actor or John Taylor is abusing his role with the company to expose them to considerable liability risk.
> Taylor said LG is committed to keeping residential proxy networks out of its smart TV apps going forward, and that the company’s review of those apps is “well underway now.”
The solution is not app “review”. Bake into the OS security restrictions on what apps can and cannot do. A list of *requested* domains should come with the app (and ideally be subject to user approval), and *no* other connections should be granted. If they haven’t yet figured that out, they should not be in the IoT market.
> Spur argues the problem is not that residential proxy networks exist
No, that absolutely *is* the problem! As I noted for a previous article here on the topic, ISPs prohibit them outright (user “consent” or not), so any device abusing networks this way creates a real risk of people getting their Internet connections completely shut off. And some of us create firewall entries (for an ISP’s *entire* network) when we’re on the receiving end of *any* of their residential proxy abuse, because we’re not going to wait for the botnet DDoS from them that’s inevitably just around the corner. LG and John Taylor are responsible for their part in creating an Internet this hostile.
I wonder if Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. check apps for their TV boxes for proxy functionality. And block any from their stores (and blacklist their developers)?
If so, is a reasonable privacy, security, and ad-annoyance strategy to:
1) use one or more of them for all your apps,
2) put the TV on its own VLAN (to protect other devices from any malware that makes its way onto the TV),
3) Get all your streaming from trusted set-top boxes (to hopefully avoid spyware, adware, proxies, etc. that you haven’t signed up for)
4) Disable internet access on the TV, except when you discover you must do a software upgrade? At the TV and/or the VLAN?
the app store can’t police the tv box manufacturer which can install whatever modified android it wants
Yes they can, literally they are the only entity with the power to decide that.
You have to have allowed it to be in the store. Period slash checkmate.
You can keep your ad ridden devices. IF I SEE MY MONITOR HAVE ADS ILL THROW IT OUT AND BUY SOMETHING WORTHY.
2026, the year of the trojaned pac man , smh
Smart TVs draw a lot of vampire power. I found a simple solution. I make my Smart TV dumb again. How? Look at the network settings. Most likely the IP address is 192.168.1.Something. Change the 192 number to 193, and now your Too smart for it’s own good TV, becomes a normal dumb TV. Also, the internal microphone, and TV camera looking at you will be disabled too. You will also note your power bill will be reduced a bit too. Nice!
I just skip that by using pc monitors with an hdmi audio splitter
I do wonder if that might be dangerous? 193 is public ip address space. Use a fake gateway ip and dns server instead.
The alternative to all these ‘smart tv’s’ I like is to use an hdmi PC monitor with an hdmi audio splitter, lots of really nice monitors out there without the bloatware I could do without
This is why there is a market for devices such as the Apple TV.
A newbie here….I recently bought an LG smart TV at Costco and then installed the Spectrum TV app (I have their cable because of my live news addiction..lol). Does this mean that I have somehow enabled internet access without realizing it?
Spectrum is owned by Charter Comm. I don’t think they’ve been accused of this but I could be mistaken.
They’ve been accused of other things probably comparable on some level… but not this AFAIK.
Any journalist who ever hears the boast “we had an independent audit by PwC” needs to follow up with “and why aren’t you sharing the result”?
Otherwise you are just laundering some weird ass notion of respectability – they had enough dodgy money to get an audit, from an auditor who of course writes audits for pay, that being their job
SmartTV’s suck.
Period.
We are not probably there yet but if more people won’t connect TVs to the internet, TVs will create a mesh network itself and connect to the internet via a closest neighbor which has his TV connected to the imternet. 🙂
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/microsoft-responds-to-lg-monitors-installing-mcafee-ads-on-windows/?comments-page=1#comments
LG already does this on their TVs (not just monitors):
1) record your screen and upload it to their servers
2) listen to your conversations
3) share your data with third parties
Bit of a two faced approach going on here..