I bet you never thought that while you’re watching TV, it’s watching you right back. The surveillance never stops, that’s one thing you need to know. But I always have your back.
Remember when TVs just showed you stuff? Those days are gone.
📺 Why your TV was so cheap
That beautiful 65-inch 4K you got on Black Friday for $400? It should’ve cost $1,200. The reason it was so cheap: You’re not the customer. You’re the product.
Every smart TV sold today has ACR (automatic content recognition) built in. It screenshots your screen every few seconds and matches those shots against a database. Cable, streaming, DVDs, gaming, even what’s on your laptop via HDMI. Then it sells that data to advertisers and data brokers.
👀 What they know about you
They’re tracking every show and movie you watch, when and how long. Your Netflix and Hulu habits, even though you pay for those. What games you play. Which commercials you skip.
Combine that with your IP address and purchase history, and they’ve built a profile. They know you watch true crime at night, cartoons in the morning and fall asleep to HGTV.
💰 Who’s buying?
Advertisers: Watch a Chevy commercial? You’ll see Chevy ads on your phone an hour later.
Data brokers: Experian merges your TV habits with credit card purchases, then sells access. Yup, another reason to use Incogni* to remove your info from data brokers. If you’re not in their databases, they cannot sell your info, just sayin’.
Political campaigns: They know whether you watch Fox News or MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) and target you accordingly.
Insurance companies: Some are using viewing data to assess “lifestyle risk.”
🔧 Turn it off
Think this is illegal? In 2017, Vizio paid $2.2 million to the FTC for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Here’s the kicker: Samsung, LG, Sony and TCL still do the exact same thing. They buried the consent on page 47 of terms you didn’t read.
Every brand hides these settings differently. Samsung calls them “Viewing Information Services.” For LG, it’s “Live Plus.” Vizio buries them in “Reset & Admin.”
I’ve got a free step-by-step guide for every major brand. It only takes two minutes once you know where to look.
🤔 Why this matters
“I don’t care if they know I watch The Office reruns” misses the point. Your viewing habits reveal your income level, political leanings, health concerns and vulnerabilities. That profile gets sold, leaked or hacked. Unlike a credit card, you can’t change your behavioral patterns.
📲 Share the knowledge: Know someone who got a new TV? Forward this to them. Or use the share icons below so together we can protect the world!
How should I answer this? “Kim! Nothing is built in America these days. I just bought a TV, and it said, ‘Built In Antenna.’ I don’t even know where that is!” — Bobby in LA. (There’s only so much I can do, really.)