Your TV is selling you out
Bottom Line: It’s not complicated. Anything connected to the internet has the potential to collect information and any entity has the potential to share, often selling, that information. I’m the youngest of five and there’s a six-year difference between my youngest brother and me. I recall one of life’s early lessons being about the TV. My brothers thought it would be funny to convince me that the TV could watch me. For the better part of a day I’m pretty sure I thought that was at least possible. Maybe they were just visionaries.
As we know smart TV’s can connect to just about anything. But do you know what they’re already connecting to? Researchers with Northeastern University in conjunction with the Imperial College of London found something peculiar about smart TVs. No matter the TV, no matter the user, all roads led to the viewer’s information going to Netflix. Everything. What you watch, when you watch it, how long you watch it along with any other personal information the smart TV had available to share (sell) to Netflix. It didn’t stop there... Google, Facebook and Amazon are also getting the goods. Think about how all that data can be used by them to sell to you. What’s more is who knows where the data trail ends? Here you are watching TV and behind the scenes what you’re doing is being sold and used to market to you.
Now, this was just discovered about TV’s. Imagine what’s going on if you’ve gone full smart home? Maybe you care, maybe you don’t, but you should know what’s really going on.