Making Your Smart TV Dumb and Its Benefits

A TV that records your conversations, a refrigerator that sends your grocery list to third-party advertisers, and a thermostat that taps into your home WiFi network — it’s no surprise = smart devices are a huge privacy invasion. Many of these gadgets, especially smart TVs, come with default settings that pry into your personal life and are difficult to turn off. Your smart TV is likely collecting more information about you than you’re comfortable with. Information you might not even be aware is being tracked. But don’t worry, there are ways to make your smart TV dumber, which can protect your privacy. The short answer is yes, your TV is spying on you. Smart TV manufacturers collect data about you and either uses it to personalize advertising and content recommendations or sell it to third parties who target their ads to you as well. There are three main ways your smart TV could be spying on you: Concerns about smart TVs go deeper than invading your privacy. If TV manufacturers can gather this much information about you, what’s stopping hackers and cybercriminals from doing so as well? If you leave your TV’s smart features on, it is easier for hackers to access your network. Since smart TVs became popular, there’s been a string of scandals related to consumer privacy, including: These scandals are only a few among the many that have erupted as a result of using smart TVs. If you don’t want to learn about your TV’s security vulnerabilities from a news story (i.e. after the incident happens), then take action and disable your TV’s smart features. The easiest way to make your smart TV dumb is by disconnecting it from the Internet completely. Advertisers can’t find you, hackers can’t get into your network, and you have just a regular TV. If you want to watch content from streaming services, you can always hook up your laptop to your TV with an HDMI cable. For those who don’t have the option to sever their smart TV from the Internet, there’s a second method for dumbing down a smart TV: find the ACR setting and turn it off. ACR goes by different names depending on which company built your smart TV. As a result, finding the right settings and disabling them differs for each TV. Preventing companies and advertisers (and in some cases, the government) from tracking you through your TV shouldn’t be this difficult. But it is. Fortunately, reporting on smart TVs invading consumers’ privacy has been widespread, so resources exist for helping you manage all the tracking. You can easily do an Internet search for “disabling ACR [your TV model]” and find helpful tips. Now that you know how much info smart TVs can collect on you and the risks it poses to your safety, you might consider making your smart TV dumb.