When you watch your Smart TV, it could also be watching you
This smart TV takes tracking to a new level
By Andrea Peterson November 10 at 11:20
AM
When you watch your Smart TV, it could also be watching
you.
A new report from Julia Angwin at ProPublica
reveals that Vizio, a top television maker, automatically tracks the viewing
habits of Smart TV owners and shares that information with advertisers in a way
that could connect those preferences to what those customers do on their phones
or other mobile devices.
Vizio's "Smart Interactivity Program" is turned
on by default for its 10 million Smart TV customers, ProPublica reported, and
works like this: The company analyzes snippets of what you watch, be it on
Netflix or traditional television, and connects patterns in your viewing
behavior with your Internet Protocol address -- an online identifier that can
be used to pinpoint every device connected from your home. That includes
everything from your laptop and phone to your smart thermostat. That
information is then shared with Vizio's partners, who in turn could use that
data to help to target advertisements.
In an e-mailed response to a Washington Post inquiry, a
Vizio spokesperson said the company's data mining programs are part of a
"revolutionary shift across all screens that brings measurability,
relevancy and personalization to the consumer like never before." Vizio
said it shares "aggregate, anonymized data" with media and data
companies so they can "make better-informed decisions" about content
and advertising strategies.
The spokesperson did not dispute the underlying
facts in ProPublica's report, but said the company believes the article
"reflects a filtered opinion of our recently updated VIZIO
Privacy Policy."
The company's privacy policy says it will share
viewing data "together with the IP address associated with the
corresponding VIZIO television" with third-party partners. "These
third parties may combine this information with other information about devices
associated with that IP address, in order to customize the advertisements
displayed on those other devices," it says. The company "imposes
strict conditions of confidentiality" when sharing IP addresses with third
parties, according to the policy. Customers can opt-out of the program from
their television’s settings menu.
There are laws that limit how companies share information
about video watching habits, including the Video Privacy Protection
Act (VPPA). However, Vizio says that those laws do not apply to its
tracking service because the company associates IP addresses with the data
rather than a person's name or other "personally identifiable
information."
It's true that some U.S. courts have held that IP
addresses do not constitute personally identifiable information. However,
privacy regulators in the European Union disagree. And IP addresses are
increasingly used by data brokers to paint detailed portraits of who people
are.
Vizio isn't the first television maker to face scrutiny
over the privacy of Smart TV technology. Earlier this year, Samsung appeared
in a flurry of headlines about eavesdropping televisions and
changed its privacy policy over a section that seemed to imply it was
constantly listening in and sending data off to a third party. (The third
party, Samsung clarified, was a voice recognition company whose
services helped make the television's voice audio features work.)
Samsung and fellow Vizio rival LG Electronics have
similar programs that track Smart TV customers' viewing habits, but only if
customers turn on the feature, according to ProPublica.
Andrea Peterson covers technology policy for The
Washington Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity, consumer privacy,
transparency, surveillance and open government.
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