Reasons not to connect Smart TV to the Internet

Almost everyone has a Smart TV these days , but not everyone is happy about it. And now, news that Smart TVs are taking pictures and tracking everything you watch down to the millisecond is sure to add to that discontent and give you another reason to ditch your Smart TV.

Smart TVs are capturing everything you do

Privacy concerns are one of the main reasons why you might not want to buy a Smart TV. Now, a 2024 study has found that some of the top Smart TV brands, such as Samsung and LG, are using something called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to periodically capture what's on screen.

Once captured, the information is sent back to the company’s servers, where it is analyzed and used to serve targeted ads. Over time, the system builds a unique fingerprint of the content you want to see, delivering increasingly targeted ads to your home.

At a high level, ACR works by periodically capturing the content displayed on the TV screen and comparing it to a content library to detect what is being viewed on the TV. It's essentially Shazam-like technology for audio/video content on Smart TVs.

The study found that Samsung Smart TVs running the Tizen OS can take screenshots every half a second, while LG WebOS TVs can take screenshots every 10 milliseconds. However, Samsung and LG aren't the only ones using ACR technology; the study notes that "ACR is deployed by all major Smart TV manufacturers," but there hasn't been much scrutiny of how this privacy-invasive technology is used.

What’s more, these Smart TVs track on-screen content even when using external devices, with the TV in “brick” mode via HDMI. So when you boot up your console in the evening to play games, ACR technology still tracks your activity and adds it to your user profile.

How to Stop Your Smart TV from Recording Everything You Do

Unfortunately, as you might expect, these companies don’t make it easy to opt out of having everything you do recorded. However, each Smart TV will have a range of options you can change to limit the amount of activity recorded and the data uploaded; research shows that it doesn’t stop the process entirely.

For example, Samsung Smart TVs should reject or change the following settings:

• Turn off "I consent to viewing information services on this device"
• Turn off "I consent to interest-based advertisements"
• Turn off Customization Service
• Turn on Do not track
• Turn off Improve personalized ads
• Turn off Get news and special offers

While LG Smart TV owners should:

• Enable Limit ad tracking
• Turn off TV membership agreement for marketing comms
• Turn on Do not sell my personal information
• Edit the User Agreement in Privacy and Terms as follows:
  • Turn off:
    • Viewing information agreement
    • Voice information agreement
    • Interest-based & Cross-device advertising agreement
    • Who.Where.What?
• Turn off Home promotion
• Turn off Content recommendation
• Turn off Live plus
• Turn off AI recommendation (Who.Where.What, Smart Tips)

There are a lot of settings to keep track of, and even then, Smart TVs will still record some data.

The most effective way to prevent your Smart TV from recording your every move and protect your privacy is to stop using your Smart TV completely and switch back to a regular TV if possible. Disconnect your Smart TV from the Internet and switch to an external streaming device instead.