The researchers have discovered that automatic content recognition (ACR) tracking is active most of the time, even when TVs are used as “dumb” HDMI devices. In other words, the TV manufacturers are monitoring your private moments as well. There’s apparently no monitoring of streaming content in the UK, but there is in the US.
The only good news is that these TVs can seemingly be configured to disable ACR, provided the owners know this activity is taking place and are able to find the right settings. (I recently looked at the configuration of our TVs again, and understanding the various settings was far from easy.)
Thanks for sharing, turned it off on my tv and shared it
What if I just never connected it to the internet?
If it is a Samsung tv, they have been automatically connecting to any open wifi, maybe your neighbor has one. And there goes the data.
Avoid Samsung.
A random hacker news comment. I’m in EU, where this kind of tracking is not legal, so I cannot validate…
Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) [42] is widely used for second-party tracking in smart TVs. As shown in Figure 1, ACR periodically captures frames (and/or audio), builds a fingerprint of the content, and then shares it with an ACR server for matching it against a database of known content (e.g., movies, ads, live feed). When the fingerprint matches, ACR server can determine exactly what piece of content is being watched on the smart TV.
My TV is connected to my WiFi but I blocked its internet access via router and it only has the jellyfin app which of course runs through a local server on the same network☺
Another thing, just like the LG TV screensaver ads from the other thread, that would be a felony if a natural person did it.
Why are we tolerating this criminal behavior by corporations?
Why are we tolerating this criminal behavior by corporations?
Because it’s done in the open and it’s accepted as part of the cost of the device. This is an expected consequence of our adtech surveillance economy where devices are now subsidized because they can harvest data about you, your usage and your behavior to sell on an ongoing basis. We’ve been screaming about these sorts of practices since the late 90s and consumers have just blithered right along with every new and creepy intrusion because they get cheap things and don’t think about the real costs or consequences. And so … Here we are.
