The owner of an LG Smart TV says he’s got evidence that the TV is sending details about his viewing habits and the names of some video files he watched on the TV back to LG, against his instructions.

The British blogger Dr Beet (who the BBC names as IT consultant Jason Huntley) says he became suspicious when he saw advertisements on the TV’s “home screen” and discovered from LG’s site that these ads are targeted and take into account factors including the sites users visit through the TV and the shows that they watch.

Huntley found an option in the settings menu to have “Collection of watching info” switched on or off. However, after hooking up a computer to the TV set to see what data it was sending, he discovered that information about his viewing was being sent regardless of what setting he selected.

The data included the channel, the TV show, and an ID for his set. The unencrypted data was being sent regardless of the info collection setting. The only difference was that if the setting was on, the data was accompanied by a single-digit flag indicating that the user did not agree to the data being collected. Of course, as Huntley notes, using that flag kind of misses the point of having the setting option.

Huntley also discovered that some of the data sent back to LG didn’t refer to TV viewing, but rather listed the filename of videos he had watched on the set via a USB stick. He tested this by creating and watching a file with a memorable (if inaccurate) name and, as the very bottom of the image above shows, it did indeed show up in the data.

Initially Huntley e-mailed LG about the issue. He got a reply which said that he had accepted terms and conditions when starting up the TV for the first time, and that as a result any problem he had was between him and the retailer. That may be irrelevant from a legal perspective as it’s possible LG’s behavior may breach data protection laws. The Information Commissioner’s Office, which deals with data protection in the UK, is making inquiries.

LG has since told the BBC it is investigating the issue and plans to make a further comment later.

According to Huntley, the best way to sidestep such data collection is to configure your router to block outgoing traffic to seven domains, namely:

• ad.lgappstv.com
• yumenetworks.com
• smartclip.net
• smartclip.com
• llnwd.net
• smartshare.lgtvsdp.com
• ibis.lgappstv.com