"Hey. Put on that black bra, it's over there..."
Posted on 02/07/2017 8:15:53 AM PST by markomalley
Back in 2015, we covered how Vizio was using its new smart TVs to gather data on the viewing habits of all US customers, then sending that data back to itself to sell to third party advertising companies. What made the breach of customer trust particularly egregious was the fact that Vizio was doing this whether the end-user agreed to it or not. While the company patched that specific problem after it was publicly disclosed by third parties, the FTC opened an investigation into the company’s behavior more generally.
The findings of that investigation have since been announced. Since February 2014, Vizio has sold TVs with Inscape’s ACR content recognition software pre-installed. This software has been retrofitted into previously sold devices that lacked it — unless you’ve got a TV from prior to 2014 that you’ve never connected to the Internet, chances are that you’ve got ACR software sitting on your TV. The FTC notes that this software allows Vizio to collect information on what a consumer is watching on a second-by-second basis:
(Excerpt) Read more at extremetech.com ...
Extremely cheap market research.
To be honest, I don’t see anything wrong with this capabiliy as long as users are aware it is there and are given the chance to opt in. The default should be “off”. And there should be a sizeable cash bonus or rebate for turning it on. If the new HDTV was $300 with it on vs. $600 with it off, a lot of people would go for it, and the company would have two revenue streams.
They were just cutting into the business of the cable, phone, and satellite companies that monitor through their set top boxes and then profit from the data. They must not have donated enough to the Clinton Foundation.
"Hey. Put on that black bra, it's over there..."
With cable or satellite, a tv is essentially just a monitor. Without relying on the tuning capabilities of the device, how can the manufacturer determine what is being viewed. We all know of course that third-party content providers know and archive viewing habits.
Why does The FTC get the money?
1984 was a “How to” book.......................
I’ve got a Vizio, but I’ve never hooked up to the Internet, and probably never will.
This is what pisses me off about fines like this, import/export taxes, luxury tax, etc. The gov’t does nothing productive in this, but collects the money. The Visio people should get the money, not the FTC. Look at the windfall profits tax the gov’t collected on oil. You and I saw no relief at the pump, but the gov’t pocketed the taxes. Why is it obscene for an oil company to earn 9% on gross revenue and take all those risks to produce oil which finds the tree-huggers cheering, but those idiots feel it’s perfectly okay for the gov’t to levy a 15% tax on each gallon of distillate fuels taking no risk and producing nothing? Yeah, I know that some of that goes toward roads, but it’s a small percentage. Some portion of it ends up buying votes via the free cell phone for deadbeats and similar programs. Idiots...
In America, television watches you.
My new LG monitor has a ton of stuff built in. Netflix, hulu, youtube, web brouser, etc.
We don’t have TV or cable. Everything we watch on it is either blueray/cd or internet sourced.
Almost all devices that connect to the internet collect data. Where it goes from the pot is unknown. Personally I could care less. What gets me “upset” is when the data collection interferes with my speed and connectivity and I end up paying for it through data charges. I have two ad blockers on my Firefox browser that prevent ads from interfering.
The tv reads what channel you are watching from off the set-top box. Doesn’t take much smarts to do that.
Privacy invasion. Blackmail potential. Hang them all!
It’s a smart TV, which means frequently what is being watched is via one of the apps, which they wrote. And even showing cable and not knowing exactly what is being watched there’s a lot of data, how many people, how attentive, demographics. It’s a big data world, we’re just living in it.
You are on the computer and looking up say cameras.
Now you see camera ads everywhere on the internet.
Now you see them on the TV. I do not want to be tracked.
One day the democrats will make illegal you looking at say Free Republic and tell you over the TV that they are watching you.
In England if you litter they will broadcast from a lamp pole to have you pick it up or you get a bill in the mail.
Think red light cameras everywhere with HOA nazis.
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