Yes, you can’t stop your smart TV spying on you; it is not at all benign. It is monetising your viewing habits and exposing your home network devices.

Before you get upset, let me say that you have no option but to submit to spying if you want to use a smart TV – except perhaps to disconnect it from the internet and make it a free-to-air only TV. And even these have hidden telemetry that drives the TV program rating’s engine.

In its most basic form, smart TVs collect and send data, including:

Then we have the various Apps – from Netflix to digital TV

Plain and simple – forget the marketing BS about trying to help provide more relevant content suggestions for you. It is all about owning the customer, creating more loyalty, and selling your data.

For example (and we won’t single out any brand as they are all guilty).

As it turns out, family data is not enough to make big bucks. In 2021 we started to see Voice Assistants being used more to turn on the TV and select content. Regardless of whether you have personalised it, those voice assistants know who you are by your voice, and hence they can reliably add this data to your profile.

As mentioned, newer smart TVs have sensors to see if you are viewing or have taken time out to have a cuppa. Some have a web camera that identifies all the people watching via facial recognition.

TV makers want more because they want to own the customer. TV is now nothing more than a data vacuum.

Next, we will see TV shopping with the ability to use the TV remote to click through an advertisement and buy. It will auto-fill your credit card and delivery details and pause TV during the transaction. That opens up a new can of worms about children and others misusing that service and racking up debt when the parents are not there.

There are many TV operating systems and Apps, so we cannot be specific.

It may not be called ACR but turn off any switch to disable focused content recognition.

Each TV and each profile you set up has a unique Adverting ID that you can turn off and clear the data. Again, all that means is advertising will not be laser-focused.

Go to Gmail or any free email provider and set up a junk address. You can set it to forward emails to your real address. Use this for any sign-on to any TV OS or App. At least the profile it builds cannot link back to the real you.

If you do, data is automatically shared with them, and you don’t want that.

We know you never will reject them because you need to agree for the smart TV to work but get into the habit because some are better than others. For example, in 2017, for Roku devices, you agreed that it could sell personally identifying data.

The TV makers want you to make the TV (and its soundbar) the centre of home automation and audio/video content. That simply gives this less secure device more power. Don’t put a webcam on it – ditto. Disable motion sensors – ditto.

If you can, use the Guest network or even a second router to isolate the TV from the home network. At least it can’t report what other devices you have.

A TV maker rarely allows you to run an  Ad Blocker on a smart TV, but Google/Android TV does allow AdGuard (paid) to run. Install it from the TV app’s screen.

Consider running an ad blocker on your home network. I run a Trend Internet Home Security hardware box connected to the router that can help block ads and stop IoT devices from exfiltrating data. It catches most injected ads.

AdGuard seems to be one of the most recommended App based Ad Blockers.

Enter this preliminary list in site blocking, and you may block 90% of annoying ads. It won’t stop embedded ads in some apps.

I use Ghostery add-on for Firefox in Windows to identify ad servers and trackers and update this list.

AdGuard also has a list of DNS servers that you can change in the router that should stop adverts.

It annoys the crap out of me when any IoT device requests more permissions than it needs to do its job. All this smart TV data vacuuming is unnecessary to watch TV, but we let TV makers and Apps do it. It is wrong and should be stopped. We get no benefit – no cheaper TV.

Worse still, we do not have a choice. Rtings reviewed hundreds of TVs, and every 2021-22 TV had suggested viewing content, and the majority had retail advertising content with no way to opt-out.

Australia has a Privacy Commissioner, and you can lodge a privacy complaint online. If enough of us do this, we may see action before we are too much older and greyer.

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