Weirded out Texas AG and now US Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, released a statement saying he’s suing five major television companies, alleging they use their smart TVs to spy on Texans.
Paxton’s complaint alleges that these companies have been “unlawfully collecting personal data through Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology.”
The press release describes ACR as an “uninvited, invisible digital invader,” and said it can capture screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user’s knowledge or consent.
Paxton alleged that the companies then sell that information to target ads across platforms for a profit. The release also alleged that the Chinese Communist Party has access to all of the ACR data collected.
If you don’t want your smart TV spying on you, The Hill offers these recommendations:
- Press the Home button on your remote control to access the main menu.
- Navigate to and select Settings.
- In settings, find and select General, System or Intelligence settings from the list of options.
- Once new options appear, find and select Privacy, Terms & Conditions, Privacy Choices or a similar option.
- Inside the privacy settings, look for options called Smart TV Experience, Viewing Information Services, or similar.
- Toggle these options OFF to disable ACR.
- There may be additional options in privacy settings to disable personalized advertising. These will often be called Personalized Ads, Interest-Based Advertising, Content Recommendation or similar.
- Some smart TVs might also have DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL DATA options.