LG is investigating allegations that some of its TVs send details about their owners' viewing habits back to the manufacturer even if the users have activated a privacy setting.

It follows a blog by a UK-based IT consultant who detailed how his Smart TV was sending data about which channels were being watched.

His investigation also indicated that the TVs uploaded information about the contents of devices attached to the TV.

It could mean LG has broken the law.

The Information Commissioner's Office told the BBC it was looking into the issue.

"We have recently been made aware of a possible data breach which may involve LG Smart TVs," said a spokesman.

"We will be making enquiries into the circumstances of the alleged breach of the Data Protection Act before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken."

When the consultant - Hull-based Jason Huntley - contacted the South Korean company he was told that by using the TV he had accepted LG's terms and conditions, and that any remaining concerns should be directed to the retailer who had sold him the screen.

But when the BBC contacted LG, it indicated it was looking into the complaint.

"Customer privacy is a top priority at LG Electronics and as such, we take this issue very seriously," said a spokesman.
LG user interface Mr Huntley said details of what channels he had been watching had been sent even after a privacy setting had been changed

"We are looking into reports that certain viewing information on LG Smart TVs was shared without consent.

"LG offers many unique Smart TV models which differ in features and functions from one market to another, so we ask for your patience and understanding as we look into this matter."
Security fears

Mr Huntley said he had first come across the issue in October when he had begun researching how his Smart TV had been able to show his family tailored adverts on its user interface.

Digging into the TV's menu system, he had noticed that an option called "collection of watching info" had been switched on by default, he said.

After switching it off, he had been surprised to find evidence that unencrypted details about each channel change had still been transmitted to LG's computer servers, but this time a flag in the data had been changed from "1" to "0" to indicate the user had opted out.

"That's a terrible implementation of the idea," Mr Huntley told the BBC.

"It still sends the traffic but labels it saying I didn't want it to be sent.

""It's actually worse, I think, than if they'd not offered the optout in the first place since it allows the user to believe nothing is being sent."

He had then attached an external hard drive to the TV's USB slot, expecting that the screen might simply report that he had been watching material from an external device, he said.
Mr Huntley A file given the spurious name "midget porn" was reported to LG when Mr Huntley attached a disk drive to the TV

Instead he had found the name of each media file stored on the drive - including photos labelled with his children's names - had been sent back to LG.

He had confirmed this had been the case by creating a mock video clip that he had named "midget porn", which had then showed up in unencrypted traffic sent back to LG, he said.

Mr Huntley suggested that even if LG had never inspected the data, it could still pose a security risk as hackers could take advantage of the practice.

"I can't prove that this was being actively logged by LG, but nevertheless it was being transmitted in the clear across the internet's backbone to wherever the servers are located," he said.

A spokesman for LG said the company intended to comment further "shortly".

LG is readying a fix that will prevent its smart TVs from collecting data, the company said on Thursday in an e-mail to CNET.

The move comes in response the discovery that LG's televisions were sharing data about the channels you watch and names of media files you stream on your network -- even if you chose to disable the setting.

The revelation set off concern over what LG was or wasn't snooping on with its televisions. The company uses the data collection feature to better serve ads and recommendations on the television -- similar to what happens on the Internet.

"LG regrets any concerns these reports may have caused and will continue to strive to meet the expectations of all our customers and the public," said an LG representative.

The Korean company is working on a firmware update that will disable the data transmission when users elect to turn it off, as well as remove a feature that read and transmitted file names stored on USB flash drives or external drives on the same network as the smart TVs.

LG, however, downplayed the magnitude of both features.

The company said the information collected from watching television was not personal information, but viewing information. While it admitted the data was transmitted, it was never stored on its servers.

The collection of media file names, meanwhile, was part of a new feature to search for data from the Internet related to the program being watched, which would allow LG to deliver "a better viewing experience." LG never rolled out the feature and the company insists no personal data was collected or retained.