Do you expect your SmartTV 📺 to send what you see on the screen 👀 every 15 seconds ⏱️ to a remote server 🌐 somewhere? 🤔

A recent study by British, Spanish, and Californian universities examines how extensively #SmartTVs collect data at the operating system level, depending on usage scenarios like streaming or HDMI input. The findings reveal that these devices continuously gather data for advertising purposes.

📊 Regardless of whether users log in with the TV manufacturer, disabling privacy settings is crucial to stopping data flow. Recent tests identified menu options for disabling #AutomaticContentRecognition (ACR) across various TV platforms.

🔑 ACR technology allows TVs to create fingerprints of visible content, which are sent to the manufacturers' clouds. This data is used for targeted advertising and shared with advertising partners. In particular, some TVs frequently take screenshots up to every 10 ms (!) and transmit these fingerprints in encrypted form up to every 15 seconds (!).

📺 Smart TVs mainly collect data during linear TV viewing or when using HDMI-connected devices like gaming consoles or Blu-ray players. Although personal identifiers aren’t collected, user identification seems possible through consumption habits. Read the article of German IT magazin #ct ct.de/yx2p (German, paywall) or the paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2409….

#Privacy #AdTracking #TechInsights