Texas sues Smart TV Makers for Spying on People's Watch Habits

The Texas Attorney General has launched a lawsuit against five major smart TV manufacturers - Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL - over their use of Automated Content Recognition, or ACR.

ACR - which is enabled by default on most (if not all) smart TVs - in which the TV will periodically take screenshots of whatever is currently being displayed and identify the content being watched. Like most privacy-invasive technologies, this is used for things like targeted advertising and content recommendations, and is usually part of aggregate data as well. According to the Texas AG's lawsuit, these manufacturers take said screenshots as often as every half second.

The AG's lawsuit declares that this technology violates the privacy of Texans.

ACR can be disabled in most (if not all) smart TVs, though as with many privacy-invasive settings the wording can be misleading and thus the process is not always obvious. Consumer Reports has an article explaining how to do so on most popular brands. With any smart device, we always recommend taking the time to check the settings to enable any security features (such as 2FA) or opt out of any privacy-invasive ones like targeted ads.