One of the biggest makers of smart televisions has been found to be tracking users' viewing habits without them knowing.
Vizio has been fined $2.2 million (£1.8m) after the US
consumer watchdog discovered the company had been using content
recognition software to track viewers without asking for permission.
The tracking technology, called automated content recognition, can
recognise what is being watched on the television at any given moment.
Vizio gathered "as many as 100 billion data points a day from millions
of TVs".
Vizio, which has sold more than 11 million smart TVs since 2010, was
found to have been sharing the "mountain of data" with independent
companies such as advertisers and those that monitor audience engagement
and habits. It does not sell its TVs in the UK.
"Consumers didn't know that while they were watching their TVs, Vizio
was watching them," the US Federal Trade Commission said. "The generic
way the company described that feature – for example, 'enables program
offers and suggestions' – didn’t give consumers the necessary heads-up
to know that Vizio was tracking their TV’s every flicker." Telegraph
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