LG's Smart TVs have reportedly been logging details of owner viewing habits even after users disable data collection in the settings menu. The alarming discovery was made by one user, who found that even after he turned off an option that enables "collection of watching info," the Smart TV still phoned home to a non-functional URL with specifics on channels he'd been watching and even filenames of movies stored on an attached USB drive. "I decided to do some traffic analysis to see what was being sent," he writes. "It turns out that viewing information appears to be being sent regardless of whether this option is set to on or off."

The TV apparently identifies itself with a unique device ID, and transmits the data in unencrypted form with every change of the channel. LG's customer service department told the user that the logging is fair game since he agreed to the company's terms and conditions. They went on to say that any concerns should be directed at the retail store where he purchased the TV in question. We've reached out to the company for more details on the situation.