Does opting out of smart TV tracking work? Research finds “suspicious” traffic.

The study examined eight operating systems on twelve televisions from ten manufacturers—covering roughly 95 % of U.S. smart‑TV market share—and ran 5,943 scripted tests. When the built‑in “opt‑out” switches were flipped, Samsung’s Tizen, Vizio’s OS (formerly SmartCast), and Roku’s platform continued to generate network packets aimed at known ACR endpoints. Samsung TVs emitted traffic in every test of its native apps and in a majority of antenna and HDMI scenarios; Vizio devices pinged an Amazon Kinesis endpoint in every opted‑out case, even while idle; Roku only did so inside its own The Roku Channel, a behavior disclosed in its terms of service. Encryption blocked payload inspection, so the researchers could not confirm what was being transmitted, but the persistent patterns look “suspicious.”

These findings sit on a history of regulatory push‑back against ACR. The FTC fined Vizio $2.2 million in 2017 for collecting viewing data without consent, and Texas sued Samsung and several rivals last year, alleging unlawful data harvesting. Samsung has since revised its disclosures, while Roku openly states that first‑party app usage is still logged after opt‑out. The new evidence suggests that “opt‑out” may be a cosmetic control rather than a functional barrier, a tactic that could erode consumer trust and invite further enforcement actions, especially as lawmakers scrutinize opaque data pipelines in the living‑room.

If the traffic indeed contains user‑level viewing details, the risk is twofold: personal habits could be profiled without permission, and the data could be repurposed for targeted advertising or sold to third parties. Companies may need to redesign ACR stacks to honor user preferences or provide clearer, auditable logs. Watch for follow‑up inquiries from the FTC or state attorneys general, as well as possible industry standards that mandate payload transparency. Developers of smart‑TV OSes might also face pressure to open their ACR endpoints to independent audits, a step that could reshape how content providers and advertisers access viewership signals.