Your smart TV is snooping on you. Here's how to limit the personal data it gathers
Any internet-connected device can be hacked -- it's that simple. But when it comes to smart TVs, your device comes pre-hacked.
Smart TV vendors, streaming services, and device manufacturers collect personal data. With TVs, this process happens even if you don't sign in to a particular service.
Worse still, as far as I can tell -- and I've checked -- you can't stop the data snooping. The best you can do is cut it down by turning off Automatic Content Recognition (ACR). With ACR, your smart TV "watches" and "listens" to every show on your screen.
And when I say "every show", I mean it -- over-the-air, cable, streaming services, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, videos from a home video server, or even internet porn. ACR watches and listens by constantly pattern-matching video frames and audio snippets against an audio and visual database.
Another popular way for companies to monitor what you're watching is Advertisement Identification (AdID). AdID is a unique code of letters and numbers that identifies every television commercial. In and of itself, AdID is harmless. Used in concert with other collected data, however, it's another way companies can look over your shoulder.
