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from the watching-big-brother-watching-you dept.
Have a Vizio smart TV? You'll probably want to read this article over at net-security.org then:
Owners of Smart TVs manufactured by California-based consumer electronics company Vizio should be aware that their viewing habits are being tracked and that information sold to third parties ("partners").
And, what's more, with a recent change of the company's privacy policy, the company has started providing this data to companies that "may combine this information with other information about devices associated with that IP address."
"Beginning October 31, 2015, VIZIO will use Viewing Data together with your IP address and other Non-Personal Information in order to inform third party selection and delivery of targeted and re-targeted advertisements. These advertisements may be delivered to smartphones, tablets, PCs or other internet-connected devices that share an IP address or other identifier with your Smart TV," the privacy policy says.
Vizio's competitors Samsung and LG Electronics can also track users' viewing habits via their smart TV offerings, ProPublica's Julia Angwin pointed out, but the feature has to be explicitly turned on by the users.
Yep, glad I do all my TV watching on a computer monitor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:46AM
I've never used a smart television. Are they unusable without a connection to the Internet? Without connecting to the Internet, could one be substituted for a monitor without much inconvenience?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:09AM
At least for me, the 5 smart TVs I have used work just fine with no internet. One of them complained incessantly that it it wasn't connected to the wifi; the rest didn't seem to care.