You switched off tracking on your smart TV. Is it actually off? For some Samsung sets, new research says maybe not.
Researchers at Northeastern University tested smart TVs in a study called ‘Watching the Watchers’, looking at automatic content recognition, or ACR. ACR is the technology that identifies what’s on your screen, whether from a streaming app, an antenna or a device plugged in over HDMI, so the data can be used for things like targeted advertising.
The team checked whether the opt-out settings actually stopped that traffic. On Samsung’s Tizen TVs, it often didn’t. With ACR turned off, traffic consistent with ACR still appeared in all 30 tests on Samsung’s own streaming service, 41 of 60 antenna tests, and 18 of 30 HDMI tests.
There’s an important caveat. The traffic was encrypted, so the researchers couldn’t see exactly what was being sent. Their findings are based on traffic patterns, not decrypted contents. That’s why Ars Technica describes the traffic as ‘suspicious’ rather than proof of data collection, and the results apply to the specific Samsung TVs and software that were tested.
Other brands came out better. According to coverage of the study, opt-outs worked as expected on LG, Sony, Fire TV and VIDAA sets.
Interestingly, this contrasts with earlier research. A 2024 study of Samsung and LG TVs found that turning off viewing-information services completely stopped ACR traffic. The researchers’ newer results suggest the picture on Samsung sets is not the same as it was then.
Smart TVs are cheap partly because they make money after you buy them, through ads and viewing data. ACR is a big part of that business, which is why the opt-out matters so much.
Why it matters
Privacy settings only mean something if they work. If you own a smart TV, keep ACR switched off anyway, and if viewing privacy really matters, consider keeping the TV offline and streaming through a separate device whose opt-out has held up. For brands, the takeaway is about trust: when a setting says ‘off’, customers expect it to mean off.
Sources: Watching the Watchers paper, Ars Technica, 2024 ACR study, Techlicious. Written by the xRapid Media LLP team.