Does opting out of TV tracking work?
The Verge · John Higgins ·
A new study from Northeastern University shows that while most TV operating systems respect ACR opt-outs, not all do.
The fact our TVs are gathering our information isn’t new, but what and how they’re tracking — and if we can stop it — is hard to figure out. Researchers at Northeastern University monitored 12 TVs from 10 manufacturers to test whether opting out of automatic content recognition (ACR) actually works. While opting out was effective for most TVs — including LG, Amazon Fire TV, a Sony Bravia running Google TV, and those with Vidaa OS (which can be found on TVs from Hisense, Toshiba, and smaller brands like the Supersonic used in the study) — Samsung and Roku kept sending some data to addresses associated with ACR collection. And opting out of ACR didn’t seem to decrease network activity from Walmart’s Vizio TV at all.
ACR systems sample the audio or video playing on a TV, convert them into digital fingerprints, and send them to a database to identify what’s being watched. TV companies use that information to make recommendations of what to watch next, provide viewing metrics, and allow for targeted ads.
The researchers wanted to understand when ACR was running on each TV, whether opting out did anything, and what type of data ACR systems were capturing. Because there are many different TV operating systems, and manufacturers keep smart TVs locked down, ACR activity needs to be inferred based on where the TV sends data.
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