You might think that only the streaming apps, like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, are tracking what you watch. Sadly, your smart TV is capable of seeing much more than that, even from devices like gaming consoles and Blu-ray players. How does this work, and is it possible to disable? We’ve got you covered.
ACR Is Built Into Nearly Every Smart TV
Most smart TVs nowadays come with a built-in technology called “Automatic Content Recognition” (ACR), and that’s where this story starts. ACR works in the background, listening to the audio and capturing the video of anything playing on your TV’s screen. That includes streaming apps and so much more.
We don’t know exactly how many TVs have ACR built-in, but the evidence points to a lot of them. For example, as of October 2022, Vizio alone had more than 18 million ACR-enabled TVs on the market. And now Walmart is the proud owner of Vizio and its massive ad business.
This sneaky software matches what it records against a database to identify the program, movie, or commercial you’re watching. While ACR can be used for some helpful features like suggesting similar shows, it’s primarily used to collect data on viewing habits. This data is then sold to advertisers who use it to target you with hyper-specific ads.
ACR Tracks It All: Home Videos, Third-Party Apps, and More
Now, as mentioned, ACR’s snooping abilities aren’t limited to the main interface of your smart TV, and it’s certainly not just limited to streaming apps. In many cases, it can also pick up on what’s playing through other input sources. Essentially, anything that appears on your TV and plays audio can be tracked by the ACR technology built into the TV.
If your TV has tracking active, the video or audio signal from your streaming box or gaming console could be fed into the ACR system. This means the old home videos you had converted to DVD or that intense Xbox gaming session might still be getting analyzed. Luckily, there are ways to disable ACR, but it’s important to be aware that even your non-streaming habits might not be as private as you think.
Thankfully, You Can Turn Off Most Tracking
All of this sounds pretty grim—to a degree, it is—but there is good news. You can usually turn off ACR tracking if you know where to look. Surprising to no one, manufacturers don’t always make it easy to do this. The terminology is all over the place, and the settings can be difficult to find.
Thankfully, we’ve got a dedicated guide for disabling tracking on smart TVs. The guide includes instructions for TVs from LG, Samsung, Vizio, Amazon Fire TV, Sony Android TV, and Roku TVs made by TCL, Hisense, Philips, and Sharp.
However, when it comes to smart TVs and tracking, the best thing you can do is disconnect the TV (or never connect it in the first place) from the internet. Of course, this means you won’t be able to use the TV’s built-in smart features, but a dedicated streaming box is usually a better option anyway.
First and foremost, it’s a lot easier to upgrade a streaming device than your TV. A streaming device will almost certainly have some tracking technology as well, but since it’s independent of your TV, it won’t be able to snoop on other inputs. Using internet-connected services comes with trade-offs—the best you can do is try to minimize the privacy invasion as much as possible.
