Learn how your smart TV collects data about what you watch and consume. Here's how to protect your privacy.
Smart TVs are essential home entertainment devices that allow you to watch television shows, movies, and other content. However, many people are unaware of their ability to gather information about what is displayed on the screen. One technology that enables this is Automatic Contact Recognition (ACR), and we will explain how it works and its impact on your privacy—something you should know.
ACR technology is a system that allows a television to automatically recognize what you are watching. To do this, the system takes small samples of the audio or video and compares them to databases. If a match is found, it identifies the type of series, movie, program, or video game and saves data such as the title, time, and viewing duration. This entire process takes place in the background.
According to cybersecurity firm ESET, in addition to everything mentioned above, it can also collect data from external devices connected via HDMI, such as video game consoles or media players, creating a highly detailed record of audio and video media consumption habits in the home. From a privacy perspective, the most significant issue is that this feature is typically enabled by default.
We say this because the consent form for collecting this data is usually contained within lengthy texts that people rarely read carefully. They explain that the collected information is used to generate audience statistics, improve recommendations, and display targeted advertisements, whether on television or other relevant devices.
But what may worry us is that this data may reflect daily lifestyles, interests, and schedules, so when it is sent to external servers, the risk of it being leaked or used for unforeseen purposes increases.
To protect yourself, ESET recommends following these guidelines:
- Review the settings after the initial setup. After each update, look for options related to ACR or display data usage and disable them.
- Use different user profiles if more than one person is sharing the TV.
- Keep the firmware updated by checking the permissions.
- Consider connecting your smart TV to a separate Wi-Fi network for more control.