Last Updated on September 13, 2026 by Dave Farquhar
If you’re shopping for a smart TV, you might find the word WebOS and perhaps a version number listed in the features. That raises a question. What is WebOS on a TV, and should you care? Yes. Yes you should. And in this blog post, I’ll tell you why you should never, ever buy one.
Should you care what WebOS is on a TV?
In September 2026, the Youtube channel Gamers Nexus caught LG using WebOS to turn TVs into a massive spyware ring. LG WebOS TVs log what you or anyone else is saying around them. They also map the devices on your network. Then they send that data to advertisers. They don’t necessarily know everything about you, but they’re mapping your phones, mapping your neighbors’ wifi networks, and mapping other devices on your network. If you see commercials for HP printers and ink but never Canon, it’s not a coincidence. Your LG TV knows what printer you own.
LG denied the charges while not providing any convincing evidence what they are doing with the data they gather. The packet captures don’t lie.
Gamers Nexus also found a number of security vulnerabilities in WebOS. LG accepted those disclosures while denying the other information Gamers Nexus gathered in its investigation.
I won’t plug a WebOS TV into my network or connect it to my Wifi. For now, completely disconnecting a WebOS TV and using an external set-top box seems to be an OK migitation. Use a set-top box you control, ideally.
What is WebOS?
Hang in there with me on the TV question. Because WebOS took a strange trip to get to a TV screen near you.
If you have a long memory, you may remember Palm. Palm made pre-smartphone handheld organizers that outsold Apple’s Newton in the 90s. When smartphones kicked dedicated organizers to the curb, Palm developed a mobile operating system called WebOS. It was based on the Linux kernel and provided a graphical user interface with touch capability, similar in many respects to Google’s Android. And Palm fully intended to try to compete with Android and the rest of the smartphone market. It didn’t go so well for them, and in 2010 they put the company up for sale.
In April 2010, Hewlett Packard acquired Palm to get WebOS and hatched great plans to go head to head with Apple, using WebOS to compete with all of Apple’s phones and tablets and MP3 players. HP hoped it could find some of that ’90s Palm mojo and beat Apple again.
The HP Touchpad tablet computer was a flop along the lines of the Coleco Adam and the IBM PCjr. Maybe worse. It flopped so badly that HP pulled the plug after just two months, fired CEO Leo Apotheker, and considered getting out of not just mobile devices but even PCs and notebook computers.
HP had a grand vision for loading WebOS on its PCs alongside Windows and on any device that had a CPU in it, but that vision died with the Touchpad. HP sold off the Palm intellectual property over time, scattering it to the wind, and even released an open source edition.
But what is WebOS on a TV?
But what does any of this have to do with TVs? What is WebOS on a TV? In 2013, LG, one of the larger makers of TVs, licensed WebOS with the intent of turning it into a smart TV platform.
From LG’s point of view, putting WebOS on a TV gives them more control than they would have if they simply licensed technology from Roku, Google, or Amazon. And it certainly fits with HP’s initial 2010 vision of loading WebOS on anything and everything. LG also loads WebOS on its smart projectors and smart refrigerators.
From your point of view, probably all you care about is whether there are apps available so you can stream content from whatever streaming providers you use. Of course WebOS provides all of that. The better to spy on you with, my dear.
WebOS TVs and security and privacy (or lack thereof)
I make my living as a security professional, and we’ve been concerned about smart TV security for several years. There was a rash of LG smart TVs getting hit with ransomware a couple of years back, and in one case a security professional had to choose between paying a $500 ransom or paying LG $340 for a service call. LG eventually helped him reset the TV and didn’t charge him.
But we have other concerns too besides ransomware, such as the lack of updates most smart TVs get. Or the updates being more concerned with adding spy capabilities than keeping the device secure.
I would also never buy a smart TV that contained a camera or a microphone. While it might seem cool to make video calls from your living room using your TV, I’m concerned about the possibility of a rogue application activating the camera and/or microphone. If you want to make video calls with a smart TV, use a USB webcam that you can unplug when you’re not using it. If you’ve already bought a smart TV with a built-in camera, cover the camera when you aren’t using it.
Maybe you’re OK with strangers peeking into your living room, but there are other rooms in your house you almost certainly wouldn’t be OK with, and some of those rooms probably have a TV.
The privacy implications of WebOS make it a no-go for me.
I might consider using it with enough DNS sinkholing going on. But if you’re not skilled enough to stand up your own firewall and your own local DNS server and route all of your traffic, including all DNS traffic, through your own infrastructure, just say no.
What is WebOS: In conclusion
It’s somewhat ironic, perhaps, that Palm developed WebOS for 4-inch mobile screens and today LG is using it on 55-inch screens and refrigerators–basically anything immobile. Meanwhile, LG’s phones all run Android.
WebOS went from being a total failure on phones and tablets to being at the center of a 216-million-strong spyware ring. That’s… something. Something I don’t want to be a part of, and you shouldn’t either.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.