--- title: I ran a Pi-hole for a week and was genuinely disturbed... description: Running Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi 4 and pointing an LG C2 smart TV at it for DNS revealed that the TV continuously phones home — even when the screen is off.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-ran-a-pi-hole-for-a-week-and-was-genuinely-disturbed-by-how-much-my-tv-phones-home-lzzzwdq6o twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: I ran a Pi-hole for a week and was genuinely disturbed by how much my TV phones home | daily.dev og:description: Running Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi 4 and pointing an LG C2 smart TV at it for DNS revealed that the TV continuously phones home — even when the screen is off.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-ran-a-pi-hole-for-a-week-and-was-genuinely-disturbed-by-how-much-my-tv-phones-home-lzzzwdq6o og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/LzZzWDq6o.png og:image:alt: I ran a Pi-hole for a week and was genuinely disturbed by how much my TV phones home og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # I ran a Pi-hole for a week and was genuinely disturbed by how much my TV phones home **[XDA Developers](https://daily.dev/sources/xda-developers)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Running Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi 4 and pointing an LG C2 smart TV at it for DNS revealed that the TV continuously phones home — even when the screen is off. Domains tied to LG's Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) system, ad targeting, and telemetry kept appearing in the query logs at regular intervals. Toggling off all privacy and ad personalization options in webOS settings had no meaningful effect on telemetry traffic. Adding a smart-TV-specific blocklist to Pi-hole eliminated the home screen lag caused by promotional content loading, and a quick allowlist tweak restored thumbnail loading in streaming apps. Assigning the TV a static IP made DHCP-based blocking rules more reliable. The conclusion: true ACR opt-out doesn't exist in the settings menu — DNS-level blocking is the only practical way to stop the data flow. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Does turning off ad personalization and data collection settings on an LG webOS smart TV actually stop it from tracking me? No, turning off those settings only stops some ad-specific domains from being queried, not the underlying telemetry. Monitoring DNS logs with Pi-hole showed that LG-owned domains like nextlgsdp.com, app.lgwebostv.com, and lgtvcommon.com kept appearing at the same frequency even after disabling ad personalization and data collection toggles in webOS settings, indicating Automatic Content Recognition telemetry continued in the background. _Anyone auditing what their smart devices actually send home can compare notes on daily.dev._ ### What domains does an LG smart TV contact for tracking and ads that I could block with Pi-hole? An LG C2 running webOS was found querying nextlgsdp.com, app.lgwebostv.com, lgsmartad.com, and lgtvcommon.com every few minutes, even with the screen off. Only one of these domains served the banner ads in the webOS interface; the rest were tied to LG's Automatic Content Recognition system, which identifies on-screen content to build viewing profiles for ad partners. _Developers building network privacy tooling can track smart TV domain lists like this on daily.dev._ ### Does blocking smart TV tracking domains with Pi-hole affect app performance? Blocking a smart TV's tracking domains can cause minor side effects, such as thumbnails in streaming apps taking unusually long to load, because a CDN domain gets caught in the blocklist. The fix is identifying the specific CDN domain serving thumbnails and adding it to an allowlist, which resolved the issue within minutes while keeping ad and telemetry domains blocked. _Anyone tuning Pi-hole allowlists for smart home devices can compare setups on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [I almost bought a cheap TV streaming stick until I saw what it was doing on my network](https://daily.dev/posts/i-almost-bought-a-cheap-tv-streaming-stick-until-i-saw-what-it-was-doing-on-my-network-bhu4cyqk4) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [My smart TV's outbound traffic genuinely worried me, and now it has its own rules](https://daily.dev/posts/my-smart-tv-s-outbound-traffic-genuinely-worried-me-and-now-it-has-its-own-rules-qjfmz86xw) · XDA Developers · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Samsung TVs stop spying on viewers in Texas. Here’s how to disable ACR anywhere](https://daily.dev/posts/samsung-tvs-stop-spying-on-viewers-in-texas-here-s-how-to-disable-acr-anywhere-z1pdtnxin) · Security Boulevard · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#privacy](https://daily.dev/tags/privacy), [#monitoring](https://daily.dev/tags/monitoring), [#dns](https://daily.dev/tags/dns) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-ran-a-pi-hole-for-a-week-and-was-genuinely-disturbed-by-how-much-my-tv-phones-home-lzzzwdq6o) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"I ran a Pi-hole for a week and was genuinely disturbed by how much my TV phones home","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-ran-a-pi-hole-for-a-week-and-was-genuinely-disturbed-by-how-much-my-tv-phones-home-lzzzwdq6o","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-ran-a-pi-hole-for-a-week-and-was-genuinely-disturbed-by-how-much-my-tv-phones-home-lzzzwdq6o"},"datePublished":"2026-08-09T22:00:52.092Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:58:00.967Z","description":"Running Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi 4 and pointing an LG C2 smart TV at it for DNS revealed that the TV continuously phones home — even when the screen is off....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/dcd99aba8216163b1ffd96f78d9cc20f?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/dcd99aba8216163b1ffd96f78d9cc20f?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"XDA Developers","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"XDA Developers","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--kCg6yyAP--/f_auto,q_auto/v1774964407/logos/xda-developers?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/xda-developers"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-ran-a-pi-hole-for-a-week-and-was-genuinely-disturbed-by-how-much-my-tv-phones-home-lzzzwdq6o","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"privacy,monitoring,dns","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"XDA Developers","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/xda-developers"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"I ran a Pi-hole for a week and was genuinely disturbed by how much my TV phones home"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-ran-a-pi-hole-for-a-week-and-was-genuinely-disturbed-by-how-much-my-tv-phones-home-lzzzwdq6o#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Does turning off ad personalization and data collection settings on an LG webOS smart TV actually stop it from tracking me?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"No, turning off those settings only stops some ad-specific domains from being queried, not the underlying telemetry. 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