The Amazon Fire TV Edition platform is built into several models from Insignia and Toshiba that are sold through Amazon and Best Buy. The only way to prevent that is to avoid connecting to the internet, which means ceasing to use it as a smart TV.īelow, Consumer Reports shows you how to turn off data collection for the following TVs: Amazon Fire TV Edition, Android TV, LG, Roku, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio. You can also turn off ACR after you’ve set up your TV, though sometimes the settings can be hard to find, as we discovered in a study we published in 2020.īelow are instructions for turning off ACR in the major smart TV platforms, covering sets from LG, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio Android TV sets from companies such as Hisense, Philips, and Sharp Roku sets from brands including Element, Insignia, Hisense, and TCL and Amazon Fire TV Edition sets from Insignia and Toshiba.Įven if you turn off ACR, your smart TV will continue to collect information for its manufacturer, possibly including your location, which apps you open, and more. However, you’ll need to read each screen carefully, and some TV brands have several privacy policies and user agreements you need to look through. The company eventually paid $2.2 million to settle cases with the Federal Trade Commission and the state of New Jersey.Ī result of that case is that TV companies are more careful to get your permission before collecting viewing data, and they’ve revised their privacy policies and terms of use so that you can decline certain amounts of data collection when you first set up a new TV. The use of ACR technology wasn’t widely known by consumers until 2017, when Vizio got in trouble with federal and state regulators for collecting such data without users’ knowledge or consent. You can’t easily review or delete this data later. But the data can also be used for targeting ads to you and your family, and for other purposes. The data is transmitted to the TV maker, its business partners, or both.ĪCR, which goes by a variety of names depending on the TV brand, can help your set recommend shows you might want to watch. Technology called automatic content recognition, or ACR, attempts to identify every show you play-including those you get via cable, over-the-air broadcasts, streaming services, and even DVDs and Blu-ray discs.

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