On October 24, 2026, Xuan-Son Nguyen described a separate Samsung TV microphone test as inconclusive. Nguyen said the microphone had opened for five seconds, then did not continue listening during the observation. The TV was rooted, and several settings were disabled. On October 21, researcher log4j had alleged that a 2025 Samsung TV contained services associated with audio, viewing recognition, advertising and telemetry.
What Nguyen observed in the microphone test
Nguyen reported the five-second microphone opening on October 23. In a follow-up the next day, Nguyen called the result inconclusive and described the test conditions: the TV had been rooted, and several settings were disabled.
What log4j alleged about the 2025 TV
In an October 21 post, log4j said reverse-engineering a 2025 Samsung TV running Tizen had revealed services related to audio and advertising. Tizen is the operating system used on Samsung TVs. The researcher listed alleged always-on microphone functionality, automatic content recognition (ACR), geolocation, network mapping, an ad-targeting service, four digital rights management (DRM) services, user-profile building and telemetry.
ACR is technology for recognizing the content playing on a screen. DRM manages access to protected media, while telemetry refers to data about a system’s operation or use. In log4j’s post, these were claims about services found during the analysis.
The claims describe different observations
Log4j’s post listed alleged software services on a TV identified as a 2025 model. Nguyen described a brief microphone opening during a separate test on a rooted TV with several settings disabled. Nguyen’s follow-up characterized that test as inconclusive and said the microphone did not continue listening during the observation.
