"Did you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you? These days, most mainstream TVs use automatic content recognition (ACR), a type of ad-tracking technology that collects data on everything you watch and sends it to a central database. Manufacturers then use this information to understand your viewing habits and deliver highly targeted ads."
"To understand how ACR works, imagine a constant, real-time Shazam-like service running in the background while your TV is on. It identifies content displayed on your screen, including programs from cable TV boxes, streaming services, or gaming consoles. ACR does this by capturing continuous screenshots and cross-referencing them with a vast database of media content and advertisements. According to The Markup, ACR can capture and identify up to 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two images every second."
Most mainstream smart TVs run automatic content recognition (ACR) that continuously captures screenshots and matches them to a media database to identify programs, ads, and on-screen content. ACR can capture and identify up to 7,200 images per hour, roughly two images every second. Collected viewing data is linked to personal identifiers such as email addresses, IP addresses, and physical street addresses and is used by manufacturers and marketers to build viewing profiles and deliver highly targeted ads. Advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022. Turning off ACR can protect privacy but requires effort.
Read at ZDNET
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