Researcher Alleges Samsung TV Tracks Viewing for Advertising

A researcher using the handle @log4j alleges that software on one 2025 Samsung smart TV tracks viewing activity and links it to a cross-device advertising identifier. The claims concern a single television, and the researcher’s full technical write-up is still in preparation.

@log4j says computer vision models run on the TV and monitor activity within apps, including videos watched on YouTube, ads skipped and playback progress. The researcher also alleges that a region-specific neural network handles this activity.

For a model without a built-in microphone, @log4j says the software searches for microphones on connected soundbars or Bluetooth devices and routes audio to Bixby. The researcher has also warned that switching off automatic content recognition (ACR) may not disable other telemetry because some software checks may not honor that setting.

The code paths and sound-event counters described by the researcher do not prove that a complete recording was sent off the TV. The audio lifecycle remains untraced.

Samsung describes Pet Care and Family Care features that detect sounds such as barking or crying and send alerts through SmartThings. Sound sensing requires SmartThings and is available on some higher-end models.

In a separate test, Hugging Face engineer ngxson used a Flipper Zero to detect a microphone opening for about five seconds on a rooted Samsung TV. Several settings were disabled on that set, so the test does not establish how an unmodified television behaves.

@log4j also says OpenAI suspended the researcher’s account; the researcher posted a screenshot of an email labeled “Cyber Abuse.” The researcher says OpenAI tools were used for local reverse engineering, not to find a vulnerability or launch an attack. As of Oct. 26, Samsung and OpenAI had not publicly addressed the specific claims.