Your television is watching back
Smart TVs collect more than almost anything else in your house, and the setting is usually buried.
Updated 2026-09-26
Smart televisions are sold at a loss and make their money afterwards. The mechanism is worth understanding, because the setting that controls it is real, is switchable, and is buried.
Automatic content recognition
Most smart TVs sample what is on screen, several times a second, and match it against a database. Not just what you stream — everything, including a games console, a set-top box or a DVD.
That produces a detailed record of what your household watches and when, tied to your home address through your IP address, and sold on to advertisers who then target the phones on the same network.
It is normally enabled by default, under a reassuring name: "Viewing Information Services" on Samsung, "Live Plus" on LG, "Smart Interactivity" on Sony, "Automatic Content Recognition" on others.
What to turn off
The exact path changes with every firmware update, so the reliable method is to open your TV's settings, find the privacy or terms section, and read every toggle. You are looking for anything mentioning viewing information, interest-based advertising, personalisation or content recognition.
Turn off:
- Viewing information / content recognition, whatever it is called on yours
- Interest-based or personalised advertising
- Voice recognition, if you never use it — the microphone is in the remote
- Usage and diagnostics data, which is optional far more often than it looks
You will normally have to decline a terms screen to do it, and the TV will keep working. If a function genuinely stops, you can turn one back on knowing what you traded.
The simpler answer
Do not connect the television to the internet at all. Use a streaming stick, a console or a computer for apps. Those devices collect too, but far less, and they update properly. A television you bought in 2021 stopped getting security updates some time ago and will sit on your network for another decade.
This is the option most people dismiss and most people would be happier with.
Where a VPN helps, and where it does not
A VPN on your router covers the television, because the TV cannot run VPN software itself. That hides your home address and your traffic from your internet provider and from the TV maker's analytics, which is a genuine improvement.
It does not stop the television recognising what is on screen, and it does not stop it reporting to a manufacturer you are signed in to. The content recognition happens inside the set, before anything touches the network. Switching the setting off is the thing that stops it. A VPN changes who can watch the reports go by; only the setting stops them being made.
See what the internet sees Free, and it needs no account.