Viewing Data Harvested From Smart TVs Used To Push Ads To Other Screens? (securityledger.com)

chicksdaddy writes: In the latest episode of EULA overreach, electronics maker Vizio Holdings has been called out by the non profit investigative reporting outfit ProPublica for an on-by-default feature on its smart TVs called "Smart Interactivity" that analyzes both broadcast and streamed content viewed using the device. ProPublica noted that the company's privacy policy failed to clearly describe the tracking behavior, which included the collection of information such as the date, time, channel and whether the program was viewed live or recorded.

According to ProPublica, the monitoring of viewing information through IP addresses, while it does not identify individuals, can be combined with other data available in commercial databases from brokers such as Experian, creating a detailed picture of an individual or household. Vizio has since updated its privacy policy with a supplement that explains how "Smart Interactivity" works.

The bigger issue may be what that updated privacy policy reveals. As The Security Ledger notes, the updated Vizio privacy policy makes clear that the company will combine "your IP address and other Non-Personal Information in order to inform third party selection and delivery of targeted and re-targeted advertisements." Those advertisements "may be delivered to smartphones, tablets, PCs or other internet-connected devices that share an IP address or other identifier with your Smart TV."

In other words, TV viewing patterns will be used to serve ads to any device user who happens to be connected to the same network as the Vizio Smart TV — an obvious problem for households with a mix of say... adults and children?! Vizio does provide instructions for disabling the Smart Interactivity features and says that "connected" features of the device aren't contingent on monitoring. That's better than some other vendors. In 2014, for example, LG used a firmware update for its smart televisions to link the "smart" features of the device to viewer tracking and monitoring. Viewers who applied the update, but refused to consent to monitoring were not able to use services like Netflix and YouTube.

Comments

Weasel words

[olsmeister]

Wow, who wouldn't want to leave "Smart Interactivity" on? I don't know what it is or does, but if it's smart, and interactive, I had better leave it on, right? I want to get my money's worth out of this smart TV. I sure don't want to start disabling the smart features on my new smart TV.

Some marketing drone really earned their salary when they came up with that name.

Re:Weasel words

[MyAlternateID]

As I've advised people before, never give a smart TV its own Internet connection. Instead, use a cheap media center PC and an HDMI cable (or whatever). It will be a small portion of the cost of setting up a home theater. Then you'll have something that has serious storage, can stream whatever you like, has upgradable hardware, and easily updatable software. If you go open source, you won't have to worry about phoning home and you can put the package manager in your cron tab.

While I've advised this in the past for security purposes (I'm not on board with the whole Internet of Things for solid reasons), it's no surprise that we're seeing concrete privacy reasons as well. Corporations and the sociopaths who run them have no sense of honor or respect for their customers. That's why you can't expect them to simply ignore another chance to get advertising revenue. They're counting on the average person being too stupid and ill-informed to resist and that alone is why they don't deserve to get their way.

It would be nice to see customers rejecting this kind of practice early on, rather than waiting for it to become so bad and widespread that government finally sees an opportunity (yet one more thing to regulate!) and steps in.

Yet another reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Why "smart" internet connected TV's are a bad idea. If a device (any device) can spy on you to gather information a marketer might want, you should probably assume it will.

Get a "dumb" TV (or a smart TV that you don't set up to connect to the internet), and use a dedicated device that you choose (and preferably an open one like XBMC that you explicitly control) to stream content to it. It's not much more expensive, and isolating components to only do the thing you expect them to do prevents this kind of attack on your privacy.

Worse

[nospam007]

"Viewers who applied the update, but refused to consent to monitoring were not able to use services like Netflix and YouTube."

Another reason to use torrents and VPNs instead of apple tv, chromecast, netflix, hulu and so on.
I have a 'smart' TV as well, but I just use it as a monitor, no network cable attached.

Re: No concept of Ashley-Madison

[mnemotronic]

i get all kinds of lingerie and bra ads on my chrome browser because my wife surfs this stuff at home on safari. sometimes big fredricks of hollywood ads at work

At our house it's only me, my wife and the cat. I'm seeing ads for something called "Ashley-Madison". Are they related to Dolly-Madison cupcakes?

Re:No concept of family or shared homes.

[bill_mcgonigle]

The advertising would be a mishmash of varying tastes

It's still going to get a better result than the shotgun approach. Marketers are good at many things - not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of them.