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Your smart TV may know far more about your viewing habits than you realize, even if you rarely use its smart features. In a new privacy explainer, Proton warns that many modern TVs quietly collect data about everything displayed on the screen and share it with manufacturers, advertisers, and analytics companies.

The worrying part is that escaping this tracking is becoming increasingly difficult because many privacy controls are buried deep in settings or enabled by default. Proton argues that buying a smart TV today often means accepting a level of surveillance that most people never knowingly signed up for.

How are smart TVs tracking what you watch?

Smart TVs rely on a technology called Automatic Content Recognition, or ACR. Instead of only tracking what you stream through built-in apps, ACR identifies almost everything shown on your screen. That includes movies from streaming services, live television, games played through a console, and even content from external devices connected through HDMI.

The system creates a digital fingerprint of what is playing and matches it against large databases to identify the content. That information can then be shared with TV manufacturers, advertisers, and data brokers to build detailed profiles of your viewing habits. ACR runs at the chipset level and is typically switched on by default, so it works even if you’ve never used your TV’s smart features.

Can you actually stop your TV from tracking you?

This is where the situation becomes pretty grim. Proton says the simplest fix is to keep your TV offline entirely and feed content through a device you control, like a media box or home server over HDMI. If you want internet access without the tracking, tools like Pi-hole can block your TV’s telemetry and ad domains while leaving everything else intact.

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You can also disable ACR and other tracking features in your TV’s settings, but the options vary between brands and may not stop every form of data collection. While privacy settings exist on many televisions, they are frequently difficult to find, use confusing names, or are turned on by default, making it easy to miss them during setup.

The takeaway is that privacy has become increasingly difficult to preserve in connected devices. Smart TVs are designed to stay online, and data collection has become part of the business model. If you want the convenience of built-in apps, you may have to accept some level of tracking. If privacy is your priority, treat your smart TV like a dumb display whenever possible and let another device handle the streaming.

Manisha Priyadarshini is a tech and entertainment writer with over nine years of editorial experience.