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             How to Turn Off Smart TV Automatic Content Recognition

   Adam Engst

   At The Markup, [1]Mohamed Al Elew and Gabriel Hongsdusit write:

     If you bought a new smart TV during any of the holiday sales,
     there's likely to be an uninvited guest watching along with you. The
     most popular smart TVs sold today use automatic content recognition
     (ACR), a kind of ad surveillance technology that collects data on
     everything you view and sends it to a proprietary database to
     identify what you're watching and serve you highly targeted ads. The
     software is largely hidden from view, and it's complicated to opt
     out. Many consumers aren't aware of ACR, let alone that it's active
     on their shiny new TVs. If that's you, and you'd like to turn it
     off, we're going to show you how.

   ACR screenshots everything you watch twice per second, sending the data
   back to the TV maker for content recommendations and targeted
   advertising. It doesn't matter where the video comes from, be it a
   cable box, streaming service, or game console.

   If the thought of having your viewing habits'however
   commonplace!'tracked at that level of detail makes you as queasy as it
   does me, The Markup's article has instructions on turning ACR off on
   smart TV platforms from Roku, Samsung, and LG, a non-trivial process
   that takes between 10 and 37 clicks, depending on the platform. I'm
   happy that I have no desire to replace our 12-year-old Panasonic TV.

   [2]Read original article

References

   1. https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/12/12/your-smart-tv-knows-what-youre-watching
   2. https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/12/12/your-smart-tv-knows-what-youre-watching

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