[in-pursuit]

I know someone who worked on smart TV software. They explicitly added audio fingerprinting via integrated microphone so they could determine which programs you were watching for ad profiling.

When in the history of online ads have advertisers not used available data?

[lelandfe]

Automatic content recognition is one of the freakiest kinds of tracking I've heard of. Smart TVs become data collection hubs for the home if they get connected to the internet. Some have microphones for voice recognition. If you go into the privacy policies for them, you'll find that your audio gets sent off to third parties (albeit only when in use).

I completely disconnected my TV from the internet, but it still prompts me to connect it to Wi-Fi, to agree to policies, etc. This page is full of horribles: https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t...

[snowwrestler]

Ha, I’m imagining a sort of thriller movie villain reveal where people are intently saying silly things into their phones, while the camera slowly pans over to the smart TV in the corner, which is actually listening.

[bmicraft]

I don't get this, why would they use a microphone when they already have the original quality audio stream going to the speakers?

[in-pursuit]

They don’t always have the audio stream, e.g. when someone is using an audio receiver.