Smart TVs are watching you
2024-09-29 18:22:23.388335+02 by Dan Lyke 0 comments
Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) Tracking in Smart TVs (PDF). Or: your smart TV is watching everything that comes over the HDMI port and sending that info back to the manufacturer. Turning off ACR seems to work, but... you should probably just buy a monitor .
Our findings indicate that (1) ACR operates even when it is used as a “dumb” display via HDMI; (2) opt-out mecha- nisms stop ACR traffic; (3) ACR works differently in the UK as com- pared to the US.