Does opting out of smart TV tracking work? Research finds “suspicious” traffic.
Summary
Ars Technica reports that Northeastern University researchers found smart TVs from Samsung, Vizio, and Roku continue sending data to automatic content recognition endpoints even after users opt out of tracking. The study tested eight OSes across 12 TVs from 10 manufacturers and observed persistent ACR traffic in multiple usage scenarios, raising privacy concerns since the traffic content is encrypted and not auditable. The authors call for greater transparency and offer mitigations such as using external streaming devices or blocking identified endpoints.