JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Millions of Americans end their day the same way: kicking back on the couch and turning on the television.
But while you’re watching your smart TV, it may also be keeping track of what you’re watching.
Keith Reinecker had just purchased a new 55-inch Vizio at a local Walmart for $198.
“It doesn’t get much better than that,” Reinecker said.
But when Action News Jax Ben Becker asked Mary Perkins just how smart her television was, she joked, “It’s semi-smart.”
Vernon Johnson had a different reaction when we explained the technology.
“That TV is in your home, in your bedroom, monitoring your habits?” Johnson said. “Oh, Lord.”
What is ACR?
An Action News Jax investigation found many smart TVs use technology known as Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR, to identify content displayed on the screen and gather information about viewing habits.
Will Greenwald, a cyber expert with PCMag.com, said ACR can recognize what appears on your screen, creating a digital trail.
“It puts all that information together and makes it marketing data that can be used by the TV manufacturer, the platform runner, it can be sold,” Greenwald said. “It’s just a big sort of privacy nightmare.” But Greenwald said your TV is only part of the privacy concern over the next 5-10 years. “It’s going to be pretty much every other device that you might carry with you all day,” he said.
Regulators taking a closer look
In December 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL, alleging the companies unlawfully collected consumers’ personal data through ACR without proper consent. The lawsuits alleged some ACR technology could capture images of what appeared on a TV screen as frequently as every 500 milliseconds and transmit viewing information back to the companies.
Samsung later reached a settlement with Texas in March 2026. Under the agreement, the company agreed to stop collecting ACR viewing data from Texans without first obtaining express consent and to provide consumers with a new consent screen. The cases against the other manufacturers were still ongoing at the time the settlement was announced.
‘Drive ourselves crazy’
Reinecker said the amount of information already collected by technology companies makes his smart TV one of his lesser concerns.
“When it comes to the TV, that is the least of my worries because there are so many other electronic devices that we don’t know about that are tapped into our lives,” Reinecker said. “If we worry about that stuff right now, we will drive ourselves crazy.”
How to turn off smart TV tracking
The good news is that consumers can generally limit or disable ACR through their television’s privacy settings, though it varies by manufacturer.
Look for settings associated with ACR, viewing data, viewing information, content recognition, personalized advertising, or interest-based advertising.
Depending on your TV, the feature may appear under names such as:
- Roku: “Smart TV Experience”
- Samsung: “Viewing Information Services”
- LG: “Live Plus”
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