LG ThinQ data collection

LG ThinQ data collection refers to the personal information LG gathers and shares through its ThinQ companion app and the connected appliances it controls, and to the way LG gates appliance app features behind repeated acceptance of its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. When LG revises those terms, the ThinQ app presents a full-screen wall headed "Agree to Terms and Conditions" that tells the user "LG Electronics' Terms of Service has been revised." and "Please agree to the terms again.", offering a single "Accept all" control before a "Next" button. The July 10, 2024 LG Privacy Policy that governs ThinQ lists collection of data ranging from a "speaker's voice and its' translated text" to a connected appliance's "power (on/off) and power usage information", and names "Advertising partners" and "marketing companies and data brokers" among the parties LG shares with or receives data from. LG markets the appliances themselves as "AI" products it describes as "Listening and responding in real time for seamless living."

The ThinQ app and forced re-consent

The LG ThinQ app's forced re-consent wall presents a single "Accept all" control before its "Next" button, captured by an LG washing-machine owner in the EU on July 18, 2024.

LG controls its connected appliances through the ThinQ app, and can suspend the app's features until the user accepts a new version of its terms. The wall a viewer captured in July 2024 routes acceptance through one button. It reads "Agree to Terms and Conditions", states "LG Electronics' Terms of Service has been revised." and "Please agree to the terms again.", links to "LG Electronics Account", "Terms of Use", and "Privacy Policy", and presents "Accept all" as the single path forward to the "Next" button. The screen shows no per-item toggle; the choice is to accept everything or stop using the app's connected features.

One concrete instance comes from a viewer who emailed Louis Rossmann, an LG washing-machine owner in the EU, on July 18, 2024. He wrote that his washing machine notified him a cycle had finished, and that opening the notification forced the re-consent wall before the app would work again. The app's practical use to him was checking how long a cycle would take. He described the exchange as

They take everything ... just to give you the most basic infos in exchange.

and called it "The shittiest deal ever." He said the app "can't even work locally on my IoT network", so he had to expose it to the internet to receive a cycle-done notification. His account is one documented case of the pattern the screenshot shows, not a measure of how often the wall appears.

What the LG ThinQ privacy policy collects and shares

The LG Privacy Policy is dated "Last Updated: 07 / 10 / 2024" and states that it applies to "our SmartHome services offered via our ThinQ App." It separates what users provide directly, what LG collects automatically, and what flows from each linked appliance.

Among the information LG says it collects directly are a user's name, email address, phone number, "date of birth", gender, "speakers voice", photo, video, payment card information, and shipping address, alongside "interactions with connected electronic devices." Through the ThinQ service specifically, the policy lists identity data including "speaker's voice and its' translated text" (reproducing LG's own apostrophe placement), profile and home and room data such as a "home ID", "background screen URL", "address", and "geolocation", and usage information about how the user interacts with the app.

The policy describes a separate stream of data from each appliance linked to ThinQ: "device status, device settings, device behaviour and history of use, power (on/off) and power usage information, information on network connection and surrounding network environment", data on function execution and operation, and "Product Error/Malfunction Information". Two appliance categories carry environmental sensing language. For Air Conditioning Smart Care, the policy lists "Spatial data, including user location (according to distance and angle)" and "human sensing information". For the robot vacuum, it lists images and video, a "drawing map", "cleaning reservation information", and "cleaning history, cleaning diary list".

LG also states that it receives data about users from outside parties. The policy says LG collects information "from other third parties, for example marketing companies and data brokers", and that it may receive information from "Facebook, Google, Amazon or Line." On the sharing side, the policy names "Advertising partners" with whom LG shares "how you interact with our Services, the ads you see and the purchases you make", along with "Third party IoT providers", authorised resellers, and recipients during a "merger or transfer, reorganisation, acquisition or sale." The policy states that for residents of the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland, LG "will transfer your personal information to other countries outside the EEA, UK or Switzerland, including the Republic of Korea and the United States."

• LG ThinQ privacy policy, the version dated July 10, 2024
• 
  Policy header, "Last Updated: 07 / 10 / 2024", the version the viewer was required to accept.
• 
  LG collects information "from other third parties, for example marketing companies and data brokers".
• 
  LG shares "the ads you see and the purchases you make" with "Advertising partners".
• 
  For EEA, UK, and Swiss users, the policy transfers data to "the Republic of Korea and the United States".

LG's "AI" appliances and "Affectionate Intelligence"

LG's marketing frames its connected appliances as artificial-intelligence products. Its washer and dryer page opens with the brand line:

LG redefined AI as 'Affectionate Intelligence', highlighting its commitment to developing empathetic and caring AI that delivers exceptional customer experiences.

The kitchen page lists "Analyzing", "Optimizing", "Adapting", "Learning every pattern to enable a truly intelligent kitchen experience", and "Listening and responding in real time for seamless living" under its ThinQ heading. "Listening and responding in real time" is LG's own marketing phrasing on that page; the page does not state that any kitchen appliance contains a microphone or records audio in the home.

The laundry features LG labels "AI" describe physical load sensing, not audio. LG's AI DD washing machine "individually analyze[s] the weight and fabric type of your laundry" and adjusts drum motion accordingly, and its AI sensing "is activated when the load is under 3kg." The dryer's AI DUAL Inverter "detects weight and moisture levels" to set drying time and temperature. These are load measurements taken inside the drum.

Cameras appear in LG's higher-end appliances and look inside the appliance rather than at the room. At CES 2026, LG presented an LG SIGNATURE refrigerator whose ThinQ Food feature "uses an internal camera to help identify ingredients, suggest recipes and offer creative substitutions", and an oven with "Gourmet AI, which uses an AI camera inside the oven to identify more than 85 dishes". LG said the refrigerator is "Equipped with conversational AI based on Large Language Model (LLM) technology". LG's ambient-sensing claim for the home is tied to its ThinQ ON hub. On its AI Home page, LG says "ThinQ ON listens to your commands and sense the surroundings", and that by "Detecting temperature, humidity, air quality, and occupancy" its devices "intuitively optimize performance".

Cloud dependency and local control

The viewer reported that the ThinQ app "can't even work locally on my IoT network", and that to get a notification when a wash cycle finished he had to expose the app to the internet rather than keep the traffic on his own network. That account matches the routing LG's own policy describes. Data from a linked appliance, including its "power (on/off) and power usage information" and "information on network connection", is processed through LG's Services, and for EEA, UK, and Swiss residents the policy says that data is transferred to the Republic of Korea and the United States. The same viewer said the Home Assistant open-source project offers plugins for connected appliances, but found it too complicated to set up.

Earlier LG smart-device data and security incidents

LG's collection of usage data from its connected products predates the ThinQ brand. In 2013, NBC News reported that LG Smart TVs transmitted information about what users watched, and that data continued to be sent even after a user switched the collection setting off. NBC News reported that the data was transmitted unencrypted, and that in one test the names of files saved on a connected USB drive were transmitted to LG.

In 2017, the security firm Check Point disclosed a vulnerability it called HomeHack in LG's SmartThinQ infrastructure. Check Point reported that a flaw in the mobile app's authentication let its researchers take over a user's LG account knowing only the victim's email address, and from there control the user's appliances, including the live video camera built into LG's Hom-Bot robot vacuum. Check Point said it disclosed the issue to LG and that LG fixed it in an update.

On December 15, 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a lawsuit against LG and four other manufacturers (Samsung, Sony, Hisense, and TCL) over Automated Content Recognition (ACR), which the office said can capture screenshots of a television's display every 500 milliseconds. In the announcement, Paxton's office said the companies "sell that consumer information to target ads across platforms for a profit." That quoted characterization concerned ACR on televisions, not ThinQ appliances. On May 11, 2026, the Texas Attorney General announced a settlement with LG under which LG agreed to display a pop-up disclosure explaining how viewing data may be collected and used, and to provide a way to opt out.

Regulatory and industry context

On May 25, 2018, the day the General Data Protection Regulation took effect, the privacy group noyb filed forced-consent complaints against Google, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, arguing that the GDPR prohibits forced consent and the bundling of a service with a requirement to consent, and citing Article 7(4) of the GDPR. Those complaints concerned Google and Meta services, not LG.

United States regulators have treated covert capture of in-home device data as a deceptive practice. In February 2017, the Federal Trade Commission and the State of New Jersey settled with Vizio for $2.2 million over ACR software installed on 11 million televisions that tracked second-by-second viewing without informed consent; the FTC said the data tracking "was unfair and deceptive, in violation of the FTC Act and New Jersey consumer protection laws."

In August 2022, Amazon agreed to acquire iRobot, the maker of the Roomba robot vacuum. The companies abandoned the deal in January 2024, saying it had "no path to regulatory approval in the European Union".

See also

• LG
• Vizio