What the research found A 2024 study by researchers at UC Davis, University College London, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid audited the network traffic leaving Samsung and LG smart TVs, examining a tracking method called Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR. ACR works like Shazam for your television, capturing what’s displayed on screen or heard through the speakers at set intervals and matching it against a content database to identify what’s being watched. The researchers found ACR stayed active no matter the source: live broadcast, a streaming app, or a separate device like a game console or laptop connected through HDMI. Treating the TV as an external monitor changed nothing. Samsung TVs sent this data to company servers about once a minute. LG TVs sent it about every 15 seconds. The researchers also found that opting out meant working through several separate advertising and tracking settings across different menus, and that data requests made to the companies under privacy law came back vague, not matching the volume of data the researchers had observed being sent. Regulators have acted on the same underlying issue since. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five major manufacturers (Samsung, Sony, LG, Hisense, and TCL) in December 2025, alleging ACR captures screenshots of a user’s display every 500 milliseconds. Samsung settled in February 2026, agreeing to stop collecting ACR data without a user’s informed consent and to add clear disclosure screens. LG reached a similar settlement in May 2026. Cases against the remaining three manufacturers are still open. Why this reaches further than typical app tracking Most tracking people are used to lives inside an app or a website, contained to whatever service they’re using in the moment. ACR sits at the device level, below any single app, which means it isn’t limited to what you watch through the TV’s own smart features. A laptop, a gaming console, a cable box: anything displayed through the TV’s screen gets captured the same way. That’s a wider net than most people assume when they think about what their smart TV tracks. The practical takeaway Check your TV’s settings menu for terms like “viewing data,” “interest-based advertising,” or the brand’s own name for its ACR feature (LG calls its version “Live Plus”) and turn off each one, since a single master toggle often isn’t enough. If your TV supports it, connecting only through HDMI without ever using its built-in smart features and internet connection cuts ACR off from sending anything home, since the tracking still runs on the device but has nowhere to send what it captures. Following the settlements, check your specific TV brand’s current consent screens, since manufacturers are updating disclosure requirements as more state actions move forward. Settlement terms and available opt-out settings are shifting as more state actions play out, and what applies to one brand doesn’t apply to another. Checking your specific TV model’s current privacy settings is a better bet than assuming a rule for one manufacturer holds across the board. References Anselmi, G., Vekaria, Y., D’Souza, A., Callejo, P., Mandalari, A. M., Shafiq, Z. “Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs.” Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Internet Measurement Conference. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646547.3689013 Office of the Texas Attorney General. “Attorney General Paxton Secures Major Agreement with Samsung to Ensure that Texans are Protected from Smart TVs Collecting Their Data Without Their Knowledge.” https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-paxton-secures-major-agreement-samsung-ensure-texans-are-protected-smart-tvs