Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued five of the largest television manufacturers in the world, alleging their smart TVs secretly capture what viewers watch every 500 milliseconds and feed that data to advertisers. The companies named are Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL. For the roughly 68% of U.S. internet households that own a smart TV, the simplest defense may be one most people overlook, stop connecting the TV to WiFi entirely and use a separate streaming device instead.
How Your Smart TV Watches You Back
The technology at the center of the Texas lawsuits is called automatic content recognition, or ACR. According to the Texas Attorney General, ACR can capture screenshots of what is displayed on a television every 500 milliseconds. That data collection spans streaming apps, cable broadcasts, and even content piped in through HDMI inputs, meaning the TV can log what a viewer watches regardless of the source. The captured information is then used for ad targeting, and the lawsuits allege it is gathered without meaningful user knowledge or consent.
This is not a new problem. In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with VIZIO after the company’s software collected viewing data on 11 million smart televisions without owners agreeing to it. VIZIO’s system captured second-by-second information about video displayed on the screen, pulled from cable, set-top boxes, DVDs, over-the-air broadcasts, and streaming devices alike. The company then appended demographic segments to that viewing data and sold it to third parties. VIZIO paid $2.2 million to the FTC and the State of New Jersey to settle the charges. The Texas cases suggest the practice has only grown more aggressive in the years since.
Texas Takes on Five TV Giants
Paxton’s lawsuits target Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL, and his office has alleged that some of these companies have ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The state is seeking penalties and court orders to halt the data collection. In a related action, Paxton’s office obtained a court order stopping what it described as a CCP-aligned smart TV company from spying on Texans. The enforcement push represents one of the most sweeping state-level challenges to the smart TV industry’s data practices to date and signals that Texas intends to test how far existing consumer protection laws can reach into the connected-device ecosystem.
Samsung, for its part, has pushed back on broader surveillance claims. The company published a statement clarifying that its smart TVs do not monitor living room conversations. Samsung explained that its voice recognition operates in two modes: an embedded microphone that responds to predetermined commands and a remote microphone that processes search queries through a server. That distinction, however, addresses voice data rather than the ACR-based viewing surveillance at the heart of the Texas complaints. The other four companies named in the suits have not issued comparable public responses that appear in the available state materials, and any detailed technical defenses they may offer are likely to emerge only as the litigation proceeds.
Why Disconnecting WiFi Is the Simplest Fix
ACR requires a network connection to transmit captured data back to company servers and their advertising partners. Cutting a smart TV’s WiFi access eliminates that pipeline entirely. The TV still functions as a display, accepting signals from an antenna, cable box, Blu-ray player, or gaming console through HDMI. What it can no longer do is phone home with a record of everything shown on screen. For viewers who want streaming apps, an external device such as a Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire TV Stick can handle that job. According to an industry survey of 8,000 U.S. internet households, 68% have a smart TV and 46% already own a streaming media player, which means nearly half the country already has the hardware to make this switch.
External streaming players are not immune to data collection, but they offer a narrower attack surface. A Roku or Fire Stick tracks what happens inside its own apps, yet it cannot see what a viewer watches through a cable box or game console connected to the same TV. That is precisely what ACR does: it monitors the screen itself, capturing content from every input. Separating the streaming device from the display breaks that all-in-one surveillance loop. Viewers who take this step trade a small amount of convenience (for example, needing two remotes or losing built-in app shortcuts) for a significant reduction in the data their television can harvest and share.
Disabling ACR Without Ditching WiFi
For those who prefer to keep their smart TV online, there is a middle path. The Texas Attorney General issued a consumer alert that outlines how users can disable ACR through their TV’s settings menus. The exact location varies by brand, but common labels include “Smart TV Experience,” “Viewing Information Services,” “Live Plus,” or “Viewing Data.” Turning off these options stops the TV from fingerprinting on-screen content, though it may also disable some personalized recommendations, automatic content suggestions, and interactive features the manufacturer bundles with the tracking.
The catch is that these settings are often buried several layers deep in menus, and manufacturers have little incentive to make them obvious. The Texas lawsuits allege that the companies collected data without user knowledge or consent, which suggests the opt-out process was not clearly presented during initial setup. Viewers who choose this route should revisit their settings after software updates, since firmware changes can re-enable data collection or introduce new tracking labels. Keeping a written note of which options were disabled, and periodically confirming that they remain off, can help maintain control over how much information a smart TV is allowed to gather.
What Texans, and Other Viewers, Can Do Next
Beyond individual privacy steps, the Texas actions point to a broader accountability question: how can consumers verify what their televisions are really doing? Paxton’s office has positioned the smart TV cases as part of a larger effort to police opaque data flows tied to foreign influence and domestic ad-tech practices. Texans who want to follow the progress of these lawsuits, or review filings and orders, can use the Attorney General’s online records portal to request public documents. While access rules and response times vary, those records can shed light on how ACR systems are described in technical detail and what limits courts may place on their use.
For viewers outside Texas, the same basic playbook applies even if their own state has not filed similar suits. Treat the television as a computer with a giant screen, not as a passive appliance. Decide whether to connect it to the internet at all; if you do, immediately explore the privacy and advertising menus and disable any options that reference viewing data, content recognition, or personalized ads. Consider shifting streaming to an external device, and periodically review both the TV and streaming box settings for new toggles that expand data sharing. The Texas complaints, the earlier VIZIO settlement, and the Attorney General’s consumer warnings all point in the same direction: unless users actively intervene, modern televisions will track far more about what happens in the living room than most people ever intended.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
