Key facts
- Smart TVs from Samsung, Vizio, and Roku continue sending data to ACR endpoints after users opt out of tracking.
- Researchers found the continued traffic suspicious, indicating potential privacy violations.
- Encryption prevented analysis of the actual data being transmitted.
- Vizio OS traffic to an Amazon Kinesis endpoint continued in 100% of opted-out scenarios.
- Samsung Tizen showed ACR-like traffic in 30 of 30 first-party streaming app measurements and 41 of 60 antenna measurements after opt-out.
Smart TVs from major brands like Samsung, Vizio, and Roku continue to transmit data to automatic content recognition (ACR) endpoints even after users have opted out of tracking, according to research from Northeastern University. The study examined 12 smart TVs across eight operating systems, finding that traffic consistent with ACR tracking persisted in various usage scenarios, including when using first-party streaming apps. Researchers noted that encryption prevented them from analyzing the content of the transmitted data, but they consider the ongoing traffic suspicious and indicative of potential privacy violations. Vizio and Samsung have faced previous scrutiny over their ACR practices.