Researchers at Northeastern University have found that many smart televisions keep sending data to automatic content recognition (ACR) services even after users disable tracking in the device settings. The study, released on Monday, highlights possible privacy concerns involving several major TV manufacturers.
ACR technology works by capturing brief video frames or audio snippets from the television and transmitting them to remote servers. Companies use the collected information to gauge how many people watch specific programs and to deliver personalized advertisements.
The paper, titled “Watching the Watchers: Privacy Analysis of US Smart TV Automatic Content Recognition,” evaluated eight different smart‑TV operating systems on twelve units representing ten brands. Those brands included Amazon, Hisense, LG, Roku, Samsung, Sony, Supersonic, TCL, Vizio and Westinghouse. The researchers investigated how often the devices activate ACR and whether the opt‑out feature actually prevents data collection. Their findings suggest that opting out does not reliably stop the transmission of “suspicious” traffic to ACR endpoints.