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With progress in technology marching on, the concerns of losing privacy grow in the minds of people. Recently, the world was given yet another reason to be worried that they are being watched every single day of their lives when it was found that Vizio was spying on its customers through its smart TV units. It’s not the only one that is doing this either.
The news that Vizio was collecting data on users of its TV sets broke out back in 2015, but it wasn’t until recently that the US Federal Trade Commission finally decided to file a lawsuit against the company, Ars Technica reports. The spying actually occurred around the clock, gathering information on everything from the user’s viewing habits to some very personal information, according to the documents filed by the commission.
"For all of these uses, Defendants provide highly specific, second-by-second information about television viewing," the lawsuit reads. "Each line of a report provides viewing information about a single television. In a securities filing, Vizio states that its data analytics program, for example, 'provides highly specific viewing behavior data on a massive scale with great accuracy, which can be used to generate intelligent insights for advertisers and media content providers.'"
As one of the biggest makers and sellers of smart TVs in the world, Vizio was able to access data from over 11 million devices. After being charged for these actions, the company will now have to pay $2.2 million as well as to promise that they will cease all data gathering practices that users have not given their consent to.
What’s interesting about this case is that even though Vizio spied on its users without their knowledge or permission, there is actually a built-in mechanism to stop the tracking feature, The Verge reports. This is not something that all providers of smart TVs built into their units, which means that some TV companies are spying on users right now without giving them a choice on the matter.
