Your smart TV may be reporting what you watch. One setting stops it
Samsung calls it Viewing Information Services, LG calls it Live Plus. Both can be switched off in under a minute.
Most smart TVs ship with a feature called automatic content recognition, or ACR. When it is on, the set takes a fingerprint of whatever is on screen and sends it back to the manufacturer, which then knows what you watched and for how long.
What gets collected
Samsung’s own support page says that when the feature is enabled it generates “signatures” carrying viewing information: the programmes you watched and for how long, your TV’s identifiers including its Personalized Service ID, and your IP address. The company says it does not record or watch the content itself.
It is opt-in. It only runs if you agreed to it during setup or switched it on later. The catch is that setup screens go by fast, and most people tap Agree on everything just to get to the picture.
Samsung: Viewing Information Services
- Press Home on the remote and open Settings.
- Go to Terms & Privacy. On recent models it sits under General & Privacy; on older ones, under Support.
- Open Privacy Choices and turn off Viewing Information Services.
- Two more toggles live on the same screen: Interest-Based Advertising and Voice Recognition Services. Turn those off too if you never talk to your TV.
Samsung says you can change the choice at any time from Settings.
LG: Live Plus
On LG sets running webOS the feature is called Live Plus, which the user manual describes as a service that “provides various information on the programme you watch”. It is under Settings, General, System, Additional Settings. Switch it off. In the same menu, Advertisement holds Limit AD Tracking: turn that on and the set stops serving ads based on your interests.
Menu names shift from one model year to the next. If the path does not match, search Settings for “privacy” or “viewing information”.
Why this is back in the news
In 2026 the Texas Attorney General’s office reached an agreement with Samsung under which the company must stop collecting ACR viewing data from Texans without their express consent and add clear consent screens to its TVs. The deal only covers Texas. The setting it is about is in the TV in your living room.
Photo: A remote control pointed at a TV in a living room, with the face of the remote deliberately blurred. By Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, edited by Kuwait One.
Source: Samsung, Smart TV Automatic Content Recognition; LG webOS TV user manual; Texas Attorney General.
Kuwait One, once a week.
The most useful stories we published this week, in your inbox.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
