The smart TVS in our homes are leaking sensitive user data to companies including Netflix, Google and Facebook even when some devices are idle, according to two large-scale analyses.
Researchers from Northeastern University and Imperial College London found that a number of smart TVS, including those made by Samsung and LG, and the streaming dongles Roku and Amazon’s Firetv were sending out data such as location and IP address to Netflix and third-party advertisers.
The data were being sent whether or not the user had a Netflix account. The researchers also found that other smart devices including speakers and cameras were sending user data to dozens of third parties including Spotify and Microsoft.
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The findings are likely to heighten concerns about the privacy of user data on the internet just as smart devices, including televisions, are flooding homes.
In a separate study of smart TVS by Princeton University, researchers found that some apps supported by Roku and Firetv were sending data such as specific user identifiers to third parties including Google.
Roughly 68 per cent of US households had a connected TV device, including external hardware such as Roku and Apple TV, at the end of 2018, according to a Nielsen report from March. Tens of millions of these devices use content recognition technology that tracks everything you watch, to be able to target you better with TV advertising, which now accounts for about half of all digital ads.
The Northeastern University study, conducted on 81 different devices, both in the UK and the US, is the largest published experiment of its kind, and found “notable cases of information exposure”. Amazon, Google, Akamai and Microsoft were the most frequently contacted companies, partly because these companies provide cloud and networking services for smart devices to operate on, the researchers said.
