[Hardware] Protect Your Privacy by Changing These Setting on Your Roku and Other Streaming Devices

[FazzNoth]

Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Google Chromecast all use ACR, or automatic content recognition, to track shows and movies you watch. Here's how opt out.

Streaming devices from Roku, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire Stick and Apple TV are an easy and cheap way to watch content from your favorite streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max. Unfortunately, plugging in one of these small sticks or boxes into your TV comes with a downside: Their software platforms are often watching what you watch and track it from behind the scenes.

 

Every major smart TV streaming platform captures your viewing data. Makers of software and hardware -- from your new streaming stick to your TV itself -- use that data to "improve" the products and services they offer, by tailoring show recommendations and the ads they show you, for example. While that's potentially frustrating, ads do help keep the price down when you're buying a new streaming stick. 

One tool for tracking is called automatic content recognition, which is software that recognizes the images on your TV. ACR works regardless of whether the images come through an app or an HDMI port like a cable box, Xbox or PlayStation. The good news is that you can turn it off.

While we've previously covered this for the TVs themselves, for this story we checked out all of the latest software on streaming devices from Amazon, Roku, Google and Apple. 

Here's what we found and what you can do about it on your respective new streaming players.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/protect-your-privacy-by-changing-these-setting-on-your-roku-and-other-streaming-devices/