http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/7/14527360/vizio-smart-tv-tracking-settlement-disable-settings
Vizio has been fined by the FTC and had to pay 2.2 million to settle charges because they have been monitoring the viewing habits on more that 11 million TVs without permission for over two years. The tracking feature has been enabled by default, instead of giving the user the option to use that feature.
Companies are always able to decide if customer tracking is on or off by default. With a decision like this they probably analyzed the monetary risk of repercussions versus how valuable the information they collected. This case also only deals with one company so the settlement requirement of notifying users before tracking only applies to Vizio. Other companies may still have them turned on by default until they get taken to court.
I’m not surprised by anything in this article. I assume that any commercial network connected device is tracking my activity and finding a way to profit off of my data. Then I see some of the ad recommendations that are showing up when I browse the web and it’s obvious!
I do believe this is a privacy violation, but I think people have generally traded many of privacy rights for convenience a long time ago.
Hopefully, this is a trend and more companies are forced to deal with this privacy issue. It’s just fair for the consumer to be aware that they are being tracked, and have the option of refusing. I’m not sure how many people will agree, but obtaining this information through deception is bad business. It will be interesting to see if this mandate has any long term effects on Vizio profitability.
I red another article making similar claim, but I’m starting to wonder if this only has to do with Vizio smart TVs. I think it is matter of time before additional reports reveal the same about Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic smart TVs and so forth. It is unfortunate that certain companies will not anything to collect users’ information. This is the kind of bill I would like to see local and politicians in Washington try to push to combat those practices. This is a good opportunity for them to do something about cyber security.