Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs
2024/09/10 by Gianluca Anselmi, Anselmi, Gianluca, Yash Vekaria +9 · 19 voices · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Multimedia Communication and Technology #Video Analysis and Summarization #Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.06203
Abstract
Smart TVs implement a unique tracking approach called Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to profile viewing activity of their users. ACR is a Shazam-like technology that works by periodically capturing the content displayed on a TV's screen and matching it against a content library to detect what content is being displayed at any given point in time. While prior research has investigated third-party tracking in the smart TV ecosystem, it has not looked into second-party ACR tracking that is directly conducted by the smart TV platform. In this work, we conduct a black-box audit of ACR network traffic between ACR clients on the smart TV and ACR servers. We use our auditing approach to systematically investigate whether (1) ACR tracking is agnostic to how a user watches TV (e.g., linear vs. streaming vs. HDMI), (2) privacy controls offered by smart TVs have an impact on ACR tracking, and (3) there are any differences in ACR tracking between the UK and the US. We perform a series of experiments on two major smart TV platforms: Samsung and LG. Our results show that ACR works even when the smart TV is used as a "dumb" external display, opting-out stops network traffic to ACR servers, and there are differences in how ACR works across the UK and the US.
Cited by
Discussions
- Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs [hn, 159 points, 155 comments]
- SYMPA! "Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs" arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06203 "Smart TVs implement a unique tracking approach to profile view [bsky, 11 points, 3 comments]
- Las televisiones trackean todo lo que ves, incluso cuando las usas solo como monitor conectadas por HDMI. Cada 15-60 segundos, toman una captura de pantalla, generan un 'fingerprint' y lo mandan a sus [bsky, 9 points, 1 comments]
- Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognitio [hn, 7 points, 1 comments]
- A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs [hn, 3 points, 0 comments]
- Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at ACR Tracking in Smart TVs (2024) [hn, 3 points, 0 comments]
- First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs [hn, 2 points, 0 comments]
- The system that tracks everything on your TV via screenshots is called “Automated Content Recognition”: arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06203 Not creepy at all [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
- One more reason to brick those smart screens. arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203 [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
- As much as I understand from the study arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06203 it is a possibility yes. They did not hack the devices, so they cannot say for sure. They looked at specific traffic to understand when [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
- Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs #TeamDatenschutz arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
- Mne by zajímalo jak se třeba řeší, že všechny smart TV dělají 2 snímky za sec. toho na co se díváte a odesílají to výrobcům, kteří ta data dál obchodují. To mne docela vadí. arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203 [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]
- Watching TV with the Second-Party [hn, 1 points, 2 comments]
- Your Smart #TV is Watching You: New Research Reveals the Extent of ACR #Tracking : https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06203v1 (pdf) [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Researchers from US, UK, & Spain checked on firmware on LG & Samsung smart TVs use ACR to screenshot and ship usage by default. Turning off the spying is a 37 step process. arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Smart TVs Are Watching You "The researchers have discovered that automatic content recognition (ACR) tracking is active most of the time, even when TVs are used as “dumb” HDMI devices...." arxiv.org [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- New study shows: Smart TVs watching you. Smart TVs use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to track what’s on screen—shows, ads, movies—and build user profiles. arxiv.org/pdf/2409.062... Via @lukaszol [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- Watching TV with the Second-Party: A First Look at Automatic Content Recognition Tracking in Smart TVs arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203 [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
- ACR (automatic content recognition) tracking (including advertising id) analysis in smart TV via Samsung and LG : - Different privacy implication : UK (GDPR) vs US (CCPA) - Highest network traffic wit [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
Related