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The moment I realized my smart TV was spying on me at breakfast
I was eating cereal in my kitchen in Portland last Tuesday when an ad popped up for the exact same brand of almond milk I'd just bought at Fred Meyer. I checked my TV settings and found a feature called "Automatic Content Recognition" that had been tracking everything I watched and what I searched on my phone. Has anyone else caught their TV doing this and actually managed to turn it off for real?
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claire_young761mo ago
Man that automatic content recognition thing is creepy as hell. My buddy down the street caught his TV listening in on his arguments with his wife about what to order for dinner, then bam, pizza hut ads everywhere. I tried turning it off on mine and had to dig through five layers of menus just to find the toggle. It kept asking me if I was sure like three times before it finally let me disable it. Still not convinced it's really off though, feels like a game of whack-a-mole with these companies.
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the_wade1mo ago
I taped a piece of electrical tape over my TV's camera and never looked back.
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umar491mo ago
lol the tape is probably doing more than those menu toggles honestly. But you know it's not really listening to your conversations right? The ads showing up after talking about pizza is more likely from your phone picking up keywords through the mic and cross-referencing with your TV's data. Those smart TVs have microphones too but they're usually for voice commands not constant recording. Still, I get why people are paranoid, had a friend who swore his TV was recommending him stuff he only whispered about. Probably just coincidence but it feels creepy either way.
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