Every half-second, a Samsung smart TV takes a screenshot of whatever is on its screen. LG's TVs do it faster still, once every ten milliseconds, a hundred times a second. Researchers at University College London and UC Davis measured both rates in a 2024 study of second-by-second smart TV tracking, and found the capture kept running no matter what was actually feeding the screen: a cable box, a game console, even a laptop plugged in over HDMI purely to use the TV as a second monitor. The one exception researchers found is telling. When people streamed through Netflix or YouTube's own apps, the screenshotting stopped — most likely the result of licensing agreements those companies have struck to keep their content out of the TV maker's own database, though the researchers stopped short of confirming the contracts exist.
The technology behind this is called automatic content recognition, or ACR, and it comes switched on by default on the large majority of smart TVs sold in the US today. Think of it as a surveillance camera aimed at your own screen: it doesn't record the video or audio itself, but it captures a "fingerprint" of what's on screen often enough to match it against a reference library and identify the exact show, movie, or ad in near real time. Samsung's own support documentation is direct about what that fingerprint feeds into: a signature tied to your program history, how long you watched, a device identifier tied to your TV, and your household's IP address — feeding directly into the interest-based advertising Samsung sells separately. Combined with a streaming account or a smart-home profile, that's enough to build a detailed picture of a household's daily habits, no cookies required.
Manufacturers get away with quietly running this because there's real money attached to it. Connected TV advertisers spent an estimated $28.8 billion in the US in 2024 alone, a figure that keeps climbing as more viewing shifts off cable and onto streaming apps, and ACR is a core ingredient in that targeting.
It's also, increasingly, a reason companies buy TV platforms outright rather than just build them. Walmart closed a $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio in December 2024 specifically to fold Vizio's SmartCast operating system and its viewing-data business into Walmart's retail media arm. Fox Corporation went further, agreeing in June 2026 to buy Roku for $22 billion, a deal built less around Roku's hardware than around its direct advertising relationship with more than 100 million streaming households and the viewing data that relationship runs on. Fox said the acquisition would accelerate its expansion into connected TV advertising.
The deal is far from done: the Department of Justice issued a "second request" on September 8, 2026, extending its antitrust review into what combining Fox's advertising business with Roku's platform and viewing data would mean for competition, and Roku shareholders aren't scheduled to vote on the merger until October 14, 2026, with a close not expected until the first half of 2027.
This isn't just an economic story anymore, either. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL in December 2025, accusing all five of running ACR software that screenshots a viewer's TV every 500 milliseconds and transmits the results without meaningful notice, and flagging that several of the companies have ties to China that raise separate data-security concerns. A Texas court hit Hisense with a temporary restraining order within days. Samsung settled with Texas in February 2026, agreeing to obtain Texans' express, opt-in consent before collecting any ACR data going forward. LG settled in May 2026, agreeing to clearer pop-up disclosures, an easier opt-out, and a ban on routing any viewing data to China. Sony and TCL are still fighting the case.
Those settlements only bind the companies in Texas so far, but Kentucky has already gone further: Gov. Andy Beshear signed a state law in April 2026 classifying ACR data as sensitive and requiring consent before collection, effective July 1, 2027 — and the pattern suggests more states will follow rather than wait for owners to find the toggle themselves.
The industry's habit of burying that toggle in the first place traces back further, to a 2017 case the Federal Trade Commission and the state of New Jersey brought against Vizio, which had silently captured second-by-second viewing data on 11 million TVs since 2014 and sold it, appended with household demographics, without telling anyone. Vizio paid $2.2 million to settle and agreed to start asking first. Nearly a decade later, the UC Davis and UCL researchers who measured Samsung and LG's capture rates found that actually opting out can still mean navigating up to 11 separate menu screens.
Here's where that toggle lives on the platforms that run most American smart TVs, current as of late 2026.
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1 / 5Roku
Roku OS is the most widely used smart TV platform in the US, running on Roku's own TVs and streaming players as well as sets sold under the TCL, Hisense, Philips, and Onn brands. Roku's ACR system is called "Smart TV Experience," and it ships only on actual Roku TVs, not on the standalone streaming sticks and boxes, which don't have a display to sample in the first place.
Turn off ACR:
- From the home screen, open Settings.
- Select Privacy.
- Select Smart TV Experience.
- Choose ACR and uncheck Use info from TV inputs.
Turn off personalized ads (a separate setting in the same menu):
- Under Settings, go to Privacy.
- Select Advertising.
- Check Limit ad tracking.
Also worth doing: Under Settings > Privacy > Microphone, set channel microphone access to Never allow if you don't use voice search. None of this blocks ads outright; you'll still see the same number, just untargeted.
Roku also runs an online account dashboard, reachable by signing in at my.roku.com, where you can separately manage data-sharing and sale preferences. It doesn't include an ACR toggle; that one only lives on the TV itself.
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2 / 5Samsung
Samsung has been the world's best-selling TV brand for 20 consecutive years, and its Tizen operating system is the second-most-used smart TV platform in US homes, behind only Roku. Samsung calls its ACR system "Viewing Information Services."
Turn off ACR:
- Press Home on your remote, then open Settings.
- Select All Settings, then Support.
- Select Terms & Privacy (labeled Privacy Choices on some models).
- Turn off Viewing Information Services.
- While you're there, turn off Interest-Based Advertising to stop targeted ads, and Voice Recognition Services if you don't use the mic.
Bonus: opt out online. If your TV is linked to a Samsung account, sign in at account.samsung.com, open the Privacy tab, and use the Customization Service controls to turn off viewing-data collection and ad personalization across every Samsung device tied to that account at once. A separate privacy-rights request form on Samsung's site handles formal opt-outs from third-party data sharing and sales, though Samsung says that process can take up to 45 days to complete.
Worth knowing: as of a February 2026 settlement with the Texas Attorney General, Samsung is legally required to get Texans' opt-in consent before collecting any ACR data at all. That requirement hasn't been extended nationwide, so everywhere else, the steps above are still the fastest way to turn it off.
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3 / 5LG
LG's ACR-driven recommendation engine is called "Live Plus." Setting up an LG TV's smart features at all requires accepting a bundle of agreements covering viewing data, voice assistants, and cross-device advertising.
Turn off Live Plus:
- Open Settings, then All Settings.
- Go to General, then System.
- Select Additional Settings.
- Toggle Live Plus off.
Turn off ad tracking and data sharing:
- In Additional Settings, select Home Settings and uncheck Home Promotion and Content Recommendation to quiet the ads on the home screen.
- Still in Additional Settings, select Advertisement and toggle on Limit Ad Tracking.
- Go to Settings > Support > Privacy & Terms, and toggle on Do Not Sell My Personal Information.
One caveat: LG owners have reported on social media that a firmware update can silently switch Live Plus back on. It's worth checking this setting again after any software update.
Worth knowing: LG settled its own case with the Texas Attorney General in May 2026, agreeing to clearer disclosures, an easier opt-out, and a ban on sending viewing data to China. As with Samsung's settlement, those terms are specific to Texas for now.
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4 / 5Fire TV, Google/Android TV, and Vizio
Roku, Samsung, and LG cover most of the country, but three other platforms are common enough to be worth a quick note, and Consumer Reports maintains an updated walkthrough covering all of them alongside the three above.
Amazon Fire TV: Go to Settings > Preferences > Privacy Settings, then turn off Device Usage Data, Collect App and Over-the-Air Usage, and Interest-Based Ads.
Google TV and Android TV (used by Sony, TCL, Hisense, and others as an alternative to their own software): Go to Settings > Privacy > Ads and turn off Ad personalization (on some sets it's under Settings > Accounts > Google > Ads instead). Sony TVs layer on a separate, licensed ACR system called Samba Interactive TV; look for it under Settings > Privacy and switch it off there as well.
Vizio SmartCast (now owned by Walmart): Go to Settings > Admin & Privacy, then turn off Viewing Data and Advertising.
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5 / 5What this doesn't stop
Turning off ACR stops your TV from fingerprinting your screen and matching it to a content library. It doesn't stop the rest of the pipeline. Your viewing history inside individual streaming apps, the advertising ID assigned to your TV, and any voice data the TV has permission to collect all keep flowing unless you address each one separately, which is what the extra steps above are for. Resetting a TV's advertising ID periodically, the same way people do on phones, adds another layer; it's usually tucked into the same privacy or advertising menu as the ACR toggle.
California residents have one more option that isn't specific to TVs: the state's new Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, which launched in January 2026, lets residents request deletion of their data from hundreds of registered data brokers in a single submission. It won't reach into a TV's settings menu, but it can cut off some of the downstream companies that buy viewing data once it leaves the manufacturer.
The broader habit of digital devices listening, watching, and quietly profiting off the details isn't limited to television sets, either; Stacker has fact-checked some of the more common myths about phones and microphones that circulate around the same anxiety. Smart TVs are frequently sold at or below cost on the assumption that ad revenue over the life of the device will make up the difference. Turning off ACR doesn't change that business model. It just keeps one household's specific habits out of it.
