Something’s off.A Northeastern University study reportedly found that some smart TVs running Samsung’s Tizen, Vizio OS, and Roku OS still sent traffic to automatic content recognition (ACR) endpoints after tracking was disabled in settings. The surprising part is the mismatch between an opt-out choice and traffic that remained consistent with ACR activity.
The researchers tested 12 TVs across 10 manufacturers in 5,943 controlled experiments. They reported that the Roku behavior appeared only in its integrated streaming app and was disclosed, while Tizen and Vizio OS showed ACR-like traffic in additional scenarios. For Vizio OS, the reported endpoint also received traffic while TVs were idle.
Because the traffic was encrypted, the researchers could not determine its contents or establish whether data was collected, used, or discarded after transmission. They described the continued traffic as suspicious rather than conclusive proof that opt-out preferences were ignored.
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