How to Stop Your Smart TV From Spying on You

The Problem

You bought a television. The television also bought you, then bundled, profiled and resold you to advertisers without you noticing. The mechanism is called Automatic Content Recognition. Every major TV maker enables it by default through setup-time consent prompts that bundle it with other services.

The good news: the toggle to switch it off has existed for years. The bad news: it is buried four menus deep, named something innocuous, and on some firmware it switches itself back on after an update.

This guide covers what ACR actually does, why two American states have just intervened, and the exact menu path on every major brand.

What ACR Actually Does

Your smart TV takes a screenshot of whatever is on screen, roughly every 500 milliseconds. The Texas Attorney General's December 2025 complaint against Samsung describes precisely this cadence; independent academic work has documented similar or higher rates on other brands. The TV fingerprints the frame, compares it against a database, and identifies what you are watching. It does this regardless of source: cable box, games console, streaming app, USB stick, your laptop plugged into HDMI. Anything you put on the screen.

The viewing log is then tied to your TV's identifier and your IP address, packaged into a profile, and licensed to advertising networks and data brokers. Some manufacturers also use it to overlay "more like this" recommendations and ads. The largest ACR aggregators in the supply chain are Inscape (a Vizio subsidiary), Samba TV, and Nielsen, which according to industry disclosures ingest data from tens of millions of consumer TVs between them.

You consented to this. The consent screen appeared during initial setup, between two other prompts about Wi-Fi and account creation, and was titled something like "Viewing Information Services" or "Live Plus" or "Smart TV Experience". Most people accept the lot.

Why This Matters in 2026

Two things changed this spring.

In February 2026, Samsung settled with the Texas Attorney General over its ACR practices. The Texas AG's announcement states the agreement requires Samsung to obtain Texas residents' "express consent" before collecting ACR viewing data, and to update its smart TVs with "clear and conspicuous" disclosure and consent screens. According to Malwarebytes' coverage of the settlement, Sony, LG, Hisense and TCL are still being sued by the same office.

In March 2026, the Kentucky House passed HB 692 unanimously (92-0); the Senate followed (38-0), and the bill was signed into law on 13 April 2026. According to Hunton Andrews Kurth's analysis, the bill amends the Kentucky Consumer Data Protection Act to add ACR data to the definition of "sensitive data" and prohibits controllers from collecting it without consumer consent. The effective date is 1 July 2027. Hunton describes it as the first US state law to specifically target smart-TV surveillance.

This is not new conduct. In 2017, Vizio paid the FTC and the New Jersey Attorney General $2.2 million for collecting viewing histories from 11 million televisions without consent. The FTC complaint described tracking on a second-by-second basis and the sale of viewing profiles to advertisers. The settlement also required Vizio to delete the data it had already gathered.

Eight years on, the practice is industry-standard. Two states have started pushing back. The remaining 48 have not. These are US actions, but the firmware they target ships worldwide; the toggles below work on your TV regardless of where you bought it.

Disable on Samsung

Samsung's ACR toggle is called Viewing Information Services. On 2020 and newer Tizen models:

1. Press Home on the remote
2. Settings → All Settings → General & Privacy → Terms & Privacy → Privacy Choices
3. Switch Viewing Information Services off

Per Consumer Reports, older sets may locate the toggle under Settings → Support → Terms & Policy. On models from before 2018 the same feature was called SyncPlus; the toggle is still there, just under the older name.

While you are in that menu, also switch off Interest-Based Advertising, and switch off Voice Recognition Services if you do not use Bixby. The Texas settlement specifically targeted the consent screens, so if you set up your TV after February 2026 and you live in Texas, you may already see a redesigned prompt. Outside Texas, the defaults are unchanged.

Disable on LG

LG's ACR feature is called Live Plus. On current webOS:

1. Press Settings on the remote
2. All Settings → General → System → Additional Settings
3. Toggle Live Plus off

Where Live Plus is missing from that menu (older webOS), look under Settings → All Settings → Support → Privacy & Terms → User Agreements, and uncheck the Viewing Information entry.

Users have reported Live Plus reactivating after some firmware updates. Worth re-checking after every system update.

Disable on Roku, Sony, Vizio, Hisense

Each has its own settings tree but the principle is identical: find the named toggle and switch it off.

Roku. Settings → Privacy → Smart TV Experience → uncheck Use Info from TV Inputs. Roku's own ACR service policy states that disabling this stops new collection but does not delete data already gathered, which Roku says it may continue to share with third parties. If you want it gone, follow the opt-out with a data deletion request via Roku's privacy portal.

Sony Bravia (Google TV). Sony licenses Samba TV for ACR. Settings → All Settings → Samba Interactive TV → off. On older Bravias running pre-Google-TV firmware, look under Settings → Initial Setup or Settings → System Settings → Samba Interactive TV.

Vizio. Vizio calls it Viewing Data. Per Vizio's official support page: press Menu on the remote, then System → Reset & Admin → highlight Viewing Data → press the right arrow to set it Off. This does not disable Activity Data, which Vizio collects from app interactions on its SmartCast platform. Vizio's terms state that declining Activity Data prevents SmartCast streaming, so users who want to avoid that collection in full may need to use the TV without SmartCast or choose a non-SmartCast model.

Hisense (VIDAA). Settings → System → Advanced System Settings → Privacy → switch off Viewing Data and Ad Tracking. Hisense's own Enhanced Viewing Service privacy notice describes what is collected. Hisense models running Roku TV or Google TV firmware use those operating systems' privacy menus instead.

If your menu does not match any of these, search for the named feature, Viewing Information Services, Live Plus, Smart TV Experience, Samba Interactive TV, Viewing Data, rather than memorising a path. Manufacturers reorganise the menus across firmware versions.

What This Won't Fix

ACR is the most invasive single feature, but it is not the only one. After switching it off, the following still happens:

• Streaming apps still log everything. Each major streaming platform collects its own viewing history per its published privacy policy. Netflix's data-disclosure help page says Netflix retains "a history of your viewing activity"; Disney's privacy policy lists "the content you view" among the activity information collected; YouTube and Prime Video make similar disclosures in their respective policies. That data is governed by each app's privacy settings, not the TV's.
• Voice remotes still listen. Per Tom's Guide's overview of smart-TV microphones, a remote with a microphone for voice search sends audio to the manufacturer (or to Google or Amazon, depending on the platform). The risk is not theoretical: in 2023, the FTC fined Amazon $25 million for retaining children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely after parents requested deletion. Each TV manufacturer has a separate setting for voice data; check the same privacy menu where you found the ACR toggle.
• HDMI fingerprinting may continue on some firmware. The original FTC complaint against Vizio described tracking that ran regardless of input source. There is no consumer-facing setting that reliably catches this; it requires either a firmware update from the manufacturer or network-level blocking.
• Smart-speaker microphones in the same room are a separate problem. They are not part of the TV but they share your living room. See our Google tracking guide and digital footprint guide for adjacent steps.

The TV setting is the easy 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent is platform-by-platform.

Network-Level Blocking (Advanced)

If you want a single switch that catches what the on-TV toggle misses, including telemetry that ignores the toggle on misbehaving firmware, block the telemetry endpoints at the network level.

The simplest option is to point your home router or your TV at a DNS resolver that filters smart-TV beacons. NextDNS has a free tier and can apply a community blocklist with one toggle. Pi-hole is a self-hosted alternative that runs on a Raspberry Pi or any always-on Linux box, with the same blocklist available as an upstream feed from Perflyst's PiHoleBlocklist repository on GitHub.

The trade-off is real. Blocking telemetry endpoints can break legitimate features. Pi-hole community reports describe Samsung apps and Samsung TV Plus failing when the broader samsungcloudsolution.net family is blocked, and similar interference has been reported for LG firmware updates and Roku channels. The blocklist's documentation lists which entries to whitelist if you hit these problems.

Short of disconnecting the TV from the internet entirely, this is the most reliable approach against firmware that ignores the on-screen toggle, and against a manufacturer silently re-enabling ACR in a future update.

Where to Go From Here

The on-TV toggle is enough for most people. Five minutes per device, and the most invasive single feature is off. The Texas and Kentucky actions mean the consent prompts in front of you should keep getting clearer over the next year or two; until then the burden is on you to find the toggle.

For a quick scan of what else on your devices is leaking, run our privacy checkup tool. If you are ready to go further, our Google tracking guide covers the second-largest data pipeline in most households.

Sources

1. Texas Attorney General: Paxton Secures Major Agreement with Samsung - primary source for the February 2026 Samsung settlement, including the 500ms screenshot allegation and "express consent" / "clear and conspicuous" language
2. Malwarebytes: Samsung TVs stop spying on viewers in Texas - secondary coverage of the settlement and per-brand disable paths
3. Kentucky HB 692 (2026 Regular Session) - bill page and full text
4. Hunton Andrews Kurth: Kentucky Classifies Smart TV Data as Sensitive - legal analysis of the enacted HB 692
5. FTC v. Vizio (2017) - $2.2M settlement for ACR without consent
6. Consumer Reports: How to Turn Off Smart TV Snooping Features - per-brand settings paths
7. Roku ACR Service Policy - Roku's own statement that opting out does not delete already-collected data
8. Vizio Smart Interactivity / Viewing Data FAQ - official Vizio settings path
9. Hisense Enhanced Viewing Service Privacy Notice - what Hisense collects via VIDAA
10. Perflyst PiHoleBlocklist (GitHub) - community-maintained smart-TV telemetry blocklist for Pi-hole, AdGuard Home and NextDNS
11. Netflix: What personal information Netflix holds about you - Netflix's own description of viewing-activity retention
12. The Walt Disney Company Privacy Policy - Disney's own disclosure of content-viewing data collection
13. Tom's Guide: Yes, your TV probably has a microphone in it - per-brand voice-data controls
14. FTC and DOJ Charge Amazon with Violating Children's Privacy Law (Alexa, 2023) - $25M settlement for retaining voice recordings after deletion requests