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How to disable ACR on your TV (and stop the data tracking once and for all)

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By Chris Bayer

Your Samsung, LG, and even Sony TV comes with notable privacy risks. Here’s how to avoid one of the biggest with only a few steps.

ZDNET’s key takeaways

  • Smart TVs track viewing habits with ACR tech.
  • Collected data fuels billions in targeted ads.
  • Turning off ACR protects privacy but takes effort.

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.

What’s the incentive behind this invasive technology? According to market research firm eMarketer, in 2022, advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads, and these numbers are expected to continue rising.

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. This extensive tracking provides valuable insights for marketers and content distributors, as it reveals connections between viewers’ personal information and their preferred content. By “personal information,” I mean email addresses, IP addresses — and even your physical street address.

By understanding what viewers watch and engage with, marketers can make decisions on content recommendations to create bespoke advertising placements. They can also track advertisements that lead to purchases.

But the most disturbing part is the potential for exploitation. In the wrong hands, sensitive information gathered through ACR could be exploited or misused, potentially resulting in security risks or, in extreme cases, identity theft.

Because ACR operates clandestinely in the background, many of us aren’t even aware of its active presence each time we’re enjoying our favourite shows. Opting out of using ACR is complex and sometimes challenging. Navigating through your TV settings might take several dozen clicks to protect your privacy better.

If you, like me, perceive this feature as intrusive or unsettling, there’s a way to disable this data collection feature on your smart TV. It may take some patience, but below is a How-To list for five major brands that demonstrates how to turn off ACR.

  1. Press the Home button on your remote control.
  2. Navigate to the left to access the sidebar menu.
  3. In the sidebar menu, choose the Privacy Choices option.
  4. Select the Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy option.
  5. Ensure that the checkbox for Viewing Information Services is unchecked. This will turn off ACR and any associated ad targeting.
  6. Select the OK option at the bottom of the screen to confirm your changes.
  1. Press the Home button on your remote control to access the home screen.
  2. Press the Settings button on your remote.
  3. In the settings side menu, select the Settings option.
  4. Navigate to and select the General option.
  5. In the General menu, choose System.
  6. Select Additional Settings.
  7. In Additional Settings, locate and toggle off the Live Plus option.

LG further allows you to limit ad tracking, which can be found in Additional Settings.

  1. In the Additional Settings menu, select Advertisement.
  2. Toggle on the Limit AD Tracking option.

You can also turn off home promotions and content recommendations:

  1. In the Additional Settings menu, select Home Settings.
  2. Uncheck the Home Promotion option.
  3. Uncheck the Content Recommendation option.

 

Feature image credit: Kerry Wan/ZDNET

By Chris Bayer

Sourced from ZDNet

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Why brands can’t keep consumers in the dark on data tracking

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By Thomas Hobbs

Marketers are still not doing a good enough job explaining to consumers how their data is being tracked.

Speaking on a panel at The Drum’s Programmatic Punch event earlier this month, Belle Cartwright, director of data strategy for EMEA at Essence, said that even though GDPR is changing how brands approach data, many are still banking on consumers being willfully ignorant. She argued that this was the “wrong strategy.”

“You have to inform consumers properly on how their data is being used. How many of them know, for example, that their device ID on their smartphone is being stored so brands can look at their viewing habits to programmatically target them in the future? My guess would be not many,” Cartwright explained.

“We need to do a better job explaining why this data is collected and what the value exchange is to the consumers. Banking on them to not ask any questions is the wrong strategy and will only cause more damage in the future.”

Yet Tim Hussein, managing principal at Ebiquity Tech, questioned why marketers would heavily invest in this kind of programmatic advertising in the first place. He called out “mistruths”, likening them to lies told on the infamous ‘Vote Leave’ bus in the Brexit campaign, which give marketers a false impression of the true power of programmatic.

“Generally programmatic ads perform worse than other types of media. A lot of advertisers can pull back from programmatic and it won’t effect their ROI at all,” he claimed. “Publishers are selling programmatic with mistruths. Big DMP companies say it will make your efficiencies go up X amount, but then their cookie pools are inaccurate or these projections aren’t applied to all campaigns. There’s a lot of half truths being told.”

He added: “Right now there’s two extremes out there: you either get told programmatic is the best thing since slice bread or it’s a disaster. The reality is it’s somewhere in the middle.”

Also on the panel was Nick Stringer, vice president of global engagement and operations at Trustworthy Accountability Group, who claimed marketers should brace themselves for even more changes around data and GDPR.

“Yes, in theory, GDPR should cover the challenges we face around data, but it was only six years in the making and with the rapid rate of change we’re seeing technologically, it will almost certainly be altered soon,” he advised. “You would hope policy makers would put something in place that is more robust and covers things like the privacy directive, and reforms electronic communications much more deeply.”

The biggest looming threat approaching programmatic advertising will be the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which comes into place at the start of 2020, according to Jacob Eborn, privacy consultant manager at OneTrust PreferenceChoice. Although it won’t affect the UK, it could well set the tone for global changes.

Echoing Stringer’s comments, he concluded: “Everyone needs to be aware that how you define requirements for GDPR today probably won’t be the same in 18 months time. Thanks to the CCPA, it could soon be a lawyer who makes the case that a brand has been doing some unlawful. If you are a marketer and not comfortable with privacy litigation then you need to get comfy, and fast.”

By Thomas Hobbs

Sourced from The Drum

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