The IT Nerd

This is another example of why I will never have a smart TV in my condo. If you have a Vizio Smart TV in your house, it has been revealed that there’s a feature called “Smart Interactivity” that watches what you’re watching and offers that information to advertisers. Here’s what’s really bad about this feature:

The tracking — which Vizio calls “Smart Interactivity” — is turned on by default for the more than 10 million Smart TVs that the company has sold. Customers who want to escape it have to opt-out.

Having to opt out of something is the wrong way for features like this to work as the company behind the feature is hoping that you won’t do that either because you won’t notice or you forget to do so. They should always be opt in as that gives you control and a whole lot more trust between the user and the company.

Vizio had this to say:

In a statement, Vizio said customers’ “non-personal identifiable information may be shared with select partners … to permit these companies to make, for example, better-informed decisions regarding content production, programming and advertising.”

It’s still a bit of a privacy violation, no matter how you spin it. Now this isn’t the first time that companies that make smart TVs have been caught doing something like this. Samsung and LG have been caught doing this sort of thing as well. Thus until these companies and other companies who make smart TVs get a clue about the fact that privacy is paramount, you’ll never see me own one.

This entry was posted on November 15, 2015 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.