India, Sept. 7 -- A smart TV does not become inactive just because the panel goes black. New testing of LG OLED televisions found microphone activity during standby, local network discovery, and stored voice data being uploaded after connectivity returned.

The investigation was carried out by Gamers Nexus, Level1Techs, and independent security researchers using retail LG OLED models, including the G5. Their testing points to behavior that goes well beyond ordinary viewing analytics.

Using Wireshark, the researchers captured traffic showing the televisions probing the local area network, or LAN, and identifying other connected hardware. That included smartphones and smartwatches. The investigation also reported collection of internal Int...