A study from Northeastern University finds that smart TVs running Samsung's Tizen, Vizio's OS, and Roku's OS continue sending traffic to automatic content recognition (ACR) endpoints after users disable tracking in settings. ACR technology captures screenshots or audio clips from TVs and sends them to remote servers for audience measurement and ad targeting. The researchers ran more than 5,900 controlled experiments across 12 TVs from 10 manufacturers.
For Samsung Tizen and Vizio OS, the behavior appeared in multiple scenarios, including first-party streaming apps and, for Tizen, HDMI input. Roku's traffic continued only with The Roku Channel, which the report notes is expected and disclosed in Roku's terms of service and in settings on TCL-branded TVs. The same disclosure is not noted for Tizen or Vizio. Encryption prevented the researchers from seeing what data was sent, so they call the continued traffic "suspicious" rather than proof of a violation.
The study has limits: it covered a small sample of TVs, and lead author Ilgar Mammadov said results should not be generalized to ACR providers outside the study. Still, the researchers say their methodology is reusable, and they point to past enforcement action as context: Vizio paid $2.2 million to settle FTC charges in 2017 over ACR data collection without consent. The new findings are likely to sharpen questions for TV makers and the ad-tech businesses that rely on ACR data.