Vizio smart TVs are ignoring tracking opt-outs, continue to send data even when sitting idle
Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years.
TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust.
A hot potato: Vizio paid $2.2 million to settle charges that its smart TVs had quietly tracked what was playing on 11 million screens back in 2017. As part of that deal, the company had to start asking owners for permission first. A new study, however, suggests that telling a current Vizio TV "no" doesn't change much, at least as far as its network traffic goes.
For the study, researchers at Northeastern University tested 12 smart TVs from 10 manufacturers. Together, those sets run the eight operating systems behind roughly 95% of US smart TVs. Every viewing scenario – antenna, HDMI, streaming apps and more – ran 30 times with automatic content recognition (ACR) turned on. Each one then ran 30 more times after the researchers opted out through the TV's own...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to www.techspot.com. To see the full text click HERE
