Smart TVs sold by Samsung, LG, and Roku collect a continuous fingerprint of everything displayed on screen, including broadcast shows, streaming apps, games, and ads, through a technology called automatic content recognition, or ACR. An academic measurement study tested Samsung and LG platforms and confirmed that ACR tracking persists even when a television is used solely as an external monitor. Federal and state enforcers have forced consent changes on manufacturers, yet the default settings on most sets still favor data collection unless owners manually disable the feature.
How ACR tracking survives consent rules and monitor mode
ACR works by sampling pixels or audio from whatever appears on screen and matching those samples against a reference library held by the TV maker or a third-party data partner. The result is a second-by-second log of viewing behavior tied to a household. Researchers behind the preprint hosted on arXiv tested this system on Samsung and LG smart-TV platforms and found that ACR network traffic flowed to dedicated servers regardless of how the display was being used. Plugging in a laptop or game console did not stop the fingerprinting. The study did confirm that toggling the opt-out setting stopped network traffic to ACR servers, meaning the kill switch works when viewers actually find it.
That last detail is the core tension. Enforcement actions by the FTC and multiple state attorneys general have pushed manufacturers to add consent screens during setup. But the opt-out toggle remains buried in submenus, and there is no public data from any manufacturer showing what share of owners disable ACR within the first month of ownership. The practical result: consent flows exist on paper while the vast majority of sets continue transmitting viewing data by default.
FTC, Texas, and New Jersey enforcement actions against TV makers
Regulators have been aware of the problem for years. The FTC’s case against VIZIO in 2017, joined by New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs, established that collecting viewing history without clear notice and consent violated federal consumer protection law and required the company to obtain affirmative consent and delete previously gathered data. That matter signaled that regulators viewed ACR logs as sensitive information rather than routine diagnostics.
Samsung faced a separate reckoning. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an agreement requiring Samsung to obtain express consent before collecting ACR viewing data from Texans and to revise its disclosures and on-screen prompts. In response, Samsung now maintains support pages that explain its viewing data features and point owners to the Terms and Privacy section of the settings menu, where they can turn off ACR if they choose.
Roku’s published privacy policy likewise describes its ACR-based “Smart TV Experience” in explicit terms, stating that programs, games, ads, channels, and associated metadata may be captured and analyzed. Roku users who want to withdraw consent can do so through Settings, then Privacy, then Smart TV Experience, where multiple toggles control whether the device uses ACR to personalize recommendations and measure ads. The path exists, but it requires owners to recognize that the feature is active and to seek out the controls on their own.
What the opt-out menus still leave unanswered
The enforcement record and the academic research agree on one point: when a viewer disables ACR, the data pipeline shuts down. The open question is how many people ever reach that toggle. No manufacturer has disclosed opt-out rates, activation timelines, or the share of devices still transmitting ACR data after setup. Without those figures, it is impossible to measure whether the consent reforms imposed by the FTC, New Jersey, and Texas have changed real-world collection volumes or simply added a screen most buyers click past.
A second gap involves LG. The preprint hosted on the arXiv platform tested LG alongside Samsung, but no enforcement action against LG over ACR practices appears in the public record reviewed here. That does not mean LG’s practices are compliant; it means regulators have not publicly challenged them. Viewers who own LG sets face the same default-on ACR behavior documented in the study but without the same level of manufacturer-specific guidance that Samsung and Roku now provide.
For anyone who owns a smart TV from any of these brands, the first practical step is to open the settings menu and search for privacy or viewing data options. On Samsung sets, that typically means looking under Support and then Terms and Privacy. On Roku devices, owners should navigate to Settings, Privacy, and then Smart TV Experience. Disabling the ACR or Smart TV Experience toggle cuts the data feed that logs what appears on screen. Owners who also connect external devices, such as a Blu-ray player, streaming stick, or PC, should verify the setting remains off after firmware updates, since manufacturers can reset preferences during software changes.
Households that want to avoid ACR entirely have a few additional options, each with trade-offs. One is to use an older “dumb” television or computer monitor that lacks built-in apps and network connectivity, relying instead on external players that offer clearer privacy controls. Another is to connect smart TVs to the internet only when installing updates, keeping them offline during normal viewing. That approach, however, can break app functionality and may not be realistic for families that rely on built-in streaming platforms.
Structural incentives and the limits of consent
The deeper issue is structural. ACR is a revenue stream for TV makers, who sell aggregated viewing data to advertisers, analytics firms, and content distributors. That business model creates a persistent incentive to keep defaults tilted toward collection and to design consent flows that satisfy legal requirements while minimizing opt-outs. So long as the primary check on ACR is a buried toggle, most households will remain unaware that their viewing habits are being logged in the first place.
Privacy advocates argue that a more trustworthy model would require explicit opt-in consent at first use, with ACR turned off until a viewer affirmatively enables it. Regulators could also require standardized, easily comparable privacy labels on TV packaging, making it clear at the point of sale whether a device will track viewing and how that data will be used. Another reform would be mandatory transparency reports showing how many devices have ACR enabled, how often viewers change the setting, and how long data is retained.
Researchers and civil-society groups play a role as well. The measurement work published on preprint servers depends on independent infrastructure, and platforms such as arXiv’s donation page highlight that this ecosystem is largely supported by universities, libraries, and individual contributors rather than advertisers. Continued scrutiny can pressure manufacturers to clarify their practices even in the absence of formal enforcement.
For now, the burden falls largely on consumers. Anyone buying a new television should plan to spend part of the initial setup process digging through privacy menus and disabling any viewing data or ACR options they do not want. Owners of existing sets can revisit their settings, double-checking after major software updates. Until consent moves from a buried submenu to a genuinely informed choice, smart TVs will continue to watch their owners at least as closely as their owners watch them.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
