Vizio smartTV wack for 2.2m for collecting info w/o consent

[Rick Law]

Vizio, one of the world's biggest makers of Smart TVs, is paying $2.2 million to settle charges that it collected viewing habits from 11 million devices without the knowledge or consent of the people watching them.

According to a complaint filed Monday by the US Federal Trade Commission, Internet-connected TVs from Vizio contained ACR—short for automated content recognition—software. Without asking for permission, the ACR code captured second-by-second information about the video the TVs displayed. The software collected other personal information and transmitted it, along with the viewing data, to servers controlled by the manufacturer. Vizio then sold the data to unnamed third-parties for purposes of audience measurement, analysis, and tracking.

For full article:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/vizio-smart-tvs-tracked-viewers-around-the-clock-without-consent/

[Halcyon]

This is why you either don't connect your "smart" devices to the internet, or if you must, restrict what they can access through a firewall. It also pays to think about all the devices you own with cameras and/or microphones in them; Do they need to access the internet for anything other than software updates?? Probably not.

For example, I'm a huge fan of Sonos products but the Play:5 speaker has a built-in microphone (for "auto configuring" the sound set up). I for one don't trust Sonos to keep their firmware totally secure (or their products not to be exploited) so the firewall blocks anything but the radio stations I listen to.