Adam Breeden/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET's key takeawaysSmart TVs track viewing habits with ACR tech.Collected data fuels billions in targeted ads.Turning off ACR protects privacy but takes effort.Did you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you?These days, most mainstream TVs use automatic content recognition (ACR), a type of ad-tracking technology that collects data on everything you watch and sends it to a central ...

Your Smart TV Is the Cookie Now—And It’s Bigger Than MetaFuad Mammadov3 min read·Just nowJust now--Press enter or click to view image in full sizePhoto by Glenn Carstens-Peters on UnsplashAutomatic Content Recognition (ACR) turns every frame you watch into a monetizable fingerprint. Here’s the stack, the numbers, and the kill-switch.1. The Fingerprint Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, Vizio and Roku ship firmware with Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) baked into the kernel. ACR grabs a 2-second screen + audio samp ...