In the complaint filed against it by the FTC, Vizio was forced to delete all of the data it collected before March 1, 2016. Turning this off will prevent Samsung from using data from your voice controls, but you won’t be able to use them anymore, either. On newer Samsung TVs, you might also see an option for Voice Recognition Services. This might also show up as SyncPlus and Marketing on some older Samsung smart TVs. Toggle off the options for Viewing Information Services and Interest-Based Advertising. Open the Home menu, and choose Settings > Support > Terms & Policies. But if you’d rather keep your TV-watching private - and forego the personalized recommendations that come with software like Samba - here’s how you can turn off the data collection features on your smart TV. To be sure, the kind of data collection smart TVs are utilizing is probably not that much more invasive than most people experience in an average day on the internet. How to turn off data collection on your smart TV By law, you must opt in to these software for them to work, and they’re easy enough to turn off at any time. If you recently purchased a new smart TV for Black Friday or the holidays, there’s no reason to despair. In fact, the technology to track eye movement in relation to TVs has long been in development. Samba TV told the New York Times last year that “our business model does subsidize a small piece of the television hardware.”Īnd while the tracking is limited to what’s actually on the screen, things are only likely to get more Black Mirror-y in the future. Add it all up and Vizio captured as many as 100 billion data points each day from millions of TVs.ĭespite this fine, the software has been a boon overall to TV manufacturers, who get paid by companies like Samba to include their software. What’s more, Vizio identified viewing data from cable or broadband service providers, set-top boxes, streaming devices, DVD players, and over-the-air broadcasts. What did Vizio know about what was going on in the privacy of consumers’ homes? On a second-by-second basis, Vizio collected a selection of pixels on the screen that it matched to a database of TV, movie, and commercial content. The biggest case occurred in 2015, when Vizio was fined $2.2 million for collecting and selling user data without their owners’ consent. These practices have predictably drawn the ire of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), but major lawsuits have been relatively rare. Once they know you’re a parent of a young child, for example, you might see ads on your phone for diapers immediately after Sesame Street ends. (A Citi marketing director called Samba’s ability to sync online ads with TV ads ““a little magical.”) What makes this technology uniquely attractive to advertisers is that they can follow up on other devices using the same internet connection. Watched Sesame Street on PBS recently? Expect to see ads for diapers soon after.Īnd it doesn’t just stop at the TV screen. (Netflix told the New York Times that it has “agreements with smart TV manufacturers that precluded third-party tracking like that done by Samba TV.”)Ĭompanies like Samba then use that information to help companies target ads specifically to you. Whether you’re playing video games on an Xbox Series X or streaming Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+, the smart TV can interpret what that means about you - and what you’re likely to buy. Users must approve software like this before it can be used - Samba urges them to enable it to recommend shows “by cleverly recognizing onscreen content” - but most people don’t understand exactly how Samba collects this information.Įvery pixel on these TVs is interpreted on a second-by-second basis. The company works with around a dozen TV brands, including big names like Sony, Sharp, Toshiba, TCL and Philips. It’s been no secret that connected devices are vulnerable to hacking - Consumer Reports released a study last year that found that millions of smart TVs were susceptible - but what’s more surprising is the FBI alerting us to this smart TV data collection and telling us to be wary of the TV manufacturers themselves.Īs smart TVs have become the norm over the past several years, the companies that make them have been increasingly using that technology to market more products to us.Īccording to the New York Times, Samba TV, which creates software called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) that tracks viewer information to recommend shows, said it has collected data from 13.5 million smart TVs in the US. “Beyond the risk that your TV manufacturer and app developers may be listening and watching you,” they wrote, “that television can also be a gateway for hackers to come into your home.” On the eve of Black Friday this year, the FBI field office in Oregon sent out a post to consumers warning them about all those smart TVs that would soon be going on sale.
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