Samsung TVs might use the mics of connected devices to listen to you, researcher says

If you own a Samsung TV without a built-in microphone, it might still be listening to you, according to a researcher who shared his findings this week.

On the social media platform X, cybersecurity researcher @log4j shared that an investigation into Samsung smart TVs found that televisions without a mic will scan for connected devices that are equipped with a microphone. The smart TV will then utilize the audio data collected from the soundbar or other connected Bluetooth devices.

"This is pretty evil and clever," @log4j said their discovery.

This is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The researcher recently gained administrator root access to their own 2025 Samsung smart TV and has been sharing their findings in a series of posts on X.

Your smart TV is likely listening to you. At this point, that shouldn't be a surprise. Many televisions advertise this functionality, since your TV has to be listening to you to take voice commands and interact with other smart devices.

However, other unadvertised and concerning privacy issues are arising from the device's ability to listen in.

As NotebookCheck.net points out, while Samsung 2025 Vision AI TVs advertise that the devices detect barking dogs and crying babies and send alerts through the company's SmartThings app, Samsung does not advertise that this data is also sent back to the company.

Researcher @log4j also found that Samsung TVs track what happens inside specific apps. For example, the TV monitors what a user does in the YouTube app and even logs data such as the ads a user skips.

Mashable has reached out to Samsung for more information the reports from @log4j and will update this piece when we hear back.

These privacy issues are not unique to Samsung TVs either. Last month, Mashable covered a report from YouTuber Gamers Nexus , which claimed to find that LG TVs were secretly recording users even when the televisions were turned off. LG later responded , denying some but not all the claims.

Topics Cybersecurity Privacy Samsung

Matt Binder joined Mashable's tech vertical in 2018, where he covers social media, tech policy, cybersecurity, online scams, cryptocurrency, AI, creator news, weird tech, and other related tech beats.