Smart TVs track more than what's on
The growing concern over online data and user privacy has been focused on tech giants like Facebook and devices like smartphones. But data also is increasingly being vacuumed right out of their living rooms via their televisions, sometimes without their knowledge. Companies watching what people watch have also faced scrutiny from regulators and privacy advocates over how transparent they are being with users.
How are companies tracking data?
In recent years, data companies have harnessed new technology to immediately identify what people are watching on Internet-connected TVs, then using that information to send targeted advertisements to other devices in their homes. Marketers, forever hungry to get their products in front of the people most likely to buy them, have eagerly
embraced such practices.
Which companies are collecting information?
Samba TV is one of the bigger companies that track viewer information to make personalized show recommendations. The company said it collected viewing data from 13.5 million
smart TVs in the United States, and it has raised $40 million in venture funding from investors including Time Warner Cable, cable operator Liberty Global
and billionaire Mark Cuban.
Samba TV has struck deals with roughly a dozen TV brands — including Sony, Sharp, TCL and Philips — to place its software on certain sets. When people set up their TVs, a screen urges them to enable a service called Samba
Interactive TV, saying it recommends shows and provides special offers “by cleverly recognizing onscreen content.” But the screen, which contains the enable button, does not detail how much information Samba TV collects to make those recommendations.
Samba TV declined to provide recent statistics, but one of its executives said at the end of 2016 that more than 90 percent of people opted in.
Once enabled, Samba TV can track nearly everything that appears on the TV on a second-by-second basis, essentially reading pixels to identify network shows and ads, as well as programs on Netflix and HBO and even video games played on the TV. Samba TV has even offered advertisers the ability to base their targeting on whether people watch conservative or liberal media outlets and which party’s presidential debate they watched.
What is the advantage for advertisers?
The big draw for advertisers — which have included Citi and JetBlue in the past,
and now Expedia — is that Samba TV can also identify other devices in the home that share the TV’s Internet connection.
Samba TV, which says it has adhered to privacy guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, does not directly sell its data. Instead, advertisers can pay the company to direct ads to other gadgets in a home after their TV commercials play, or one from a rival airs.
If it sounds a lot like the Internet — a company with little name recognition tracking your behavior, then slicing and dicing it to sell ads — that is the point. But consumers do not typically expect
the so-called idiot box to be a savant.
“It’s still not intuitive that the boxmaker or the software embedded by the box-maker is going to be doing this,” said Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy and technology policy at the advocacy group Consumers Union
and a former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission. “I’d like to see companies do a better job of making that clear and explaining the value proposition to consumers.”
Samba TV’s language is clear, said Bill Daddi, a spokesman. “Each version has clearly identified that we use technology to recognize what’s onscreen, to create benefit for the consumer as well as Samba, its partners and advertisers,” he added.
Who is questioning the practice?
Still, David Kitchen, a software engineer in London, said he was startled to learn how Samba TV worked after encountering its opt-in screen during a software update on his Sony Bravia set.
The opt-in read: “Interact with your favorite shows. Get recommendations based on the content you love. Connect your devices for exclusive content and special offers. By cleverly recognizing onscreen content, Samba Interactive TV lets you engage with your TV in a whole new way.”
The language prompted Kitchen to research Samba TV’s data collection.
Enabling the service meant that consumers agreed to Samba TV’s terms of service and privacy policy, the opt-in screen said. But consumers could not read those unless they went online or clicked through to another screen on the TV. The privacy policy was more than 4,000 words, and the terms exceeded 6,500 words.
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said few people review the fine print in their zeal to set up new televisions. He said the notice should also describe Samba TV’s “device map,” which matches TV content to mobile gadgets, according to a document on its website, and can help the company track users “in their office, in line at the food truck and on the road as they travel.”
Brookman of the Consumers Union, who reviewed the opt-in screen, said the trade-off was not clear for consumers. “Maybe the interactive features are so fantastic that they don’t mind that the company’s logging all the stuff that they’re watching, but I don’t think that’s evident from this,” he said.
Who oversees smart TV companies?
Smart TV companies are not subject to the stricter rules and regulations regarding viewing data that have tra
ditionally applied to cable companies, helping fuel “this rise of weird ways to figure out what someone’s watching,”
said Jonathan Mayer, an assistant professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University and a former technology adviser at the Federal Communications Commission.
The smart TV companies are overseen by the Federal Trade Commission, Mayer said, meaning that “as long as you’re truthful to consumers, even if you make it really hard to exercise choices or don’t offer choices at all, you probably don’t have much of a legal issue.”