Vizio pays $2.2 million fine to FTC for spying on Smart TV users

TV maker Vizio got slapped by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for spying on its users. The company agreed to a $2.2 million settlement as the company violated the privacy of its users by capturing data on the viewing habits of customers of its Smart TV. Whether the end-user agreed to it or not, Vizio spied on its users on a second-by-second basis and sold the data to third-party advertising firms.

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:

Defendants’ ACR software captures information about a selection of pixels on the screen and sends that data to Vizio servers, where it is uniquely matched to a database of publicly available television, movie, and commercial content. Defendants collect viewing data from cable or broadband service providers, set-top boxes, external streaming devices, DVD players, and over-the-air broadcasts. Defendants have stated that the ACR software captures up to 100 billion data points each day from more than 10 million Vizio televisions. Defendants store this data indefinitely.

Further details about the settlement and how Vizio spied on its users can be found at ExtremeTech.