United StatesVizio TVs sent tracking-style traffic in 100% of opted-out tests.
Samsung TVs kept sending too, in all 30 first-party app tests and 18 of 30 HDMI tests.
Automatic content recognition captures screenshots or audio clips from the screen and sends them to servers for viewership measurement and targeted ads.
Encryption stopped the Northeastern University researchers reading the payload, so they call the traffic suspicious, not proven tracking.
Samsung and Vizio had not answered questions about the traffic.
How each outlet framed it
- Ars Technica leans critical
- quotes the lead researcher saying OS operators dropping the data is 'unlikely' and that the tested OSes cover about 95% of US smart TVs
Sources: Ars Technica