Info@wiperts.com
Is Your Smart TV Gathering Personal Data?
Five years ago less than half the population owned a smart TV. Now, a large part of the country owns one. There’s been a big growth of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and other companies producing and selling their own TV shows and movies. Since these subscriptions are often much more cost effective than cable TV, many people have abandoned cable in favor of streaming. For a small monthly fee, you can literally watch thousands of shows, movies, YouTube channels, music channels and other entertainment. You can game, record, and listen all for one set small cost. Along with smart television, however, comes access to the internet. You also add a certain amount of identifying information such as your name, address, payment method and even sometimes your age and email address. All this identifying information gets linked to your streaming choices.
Since it’s so easy to do in the United States, most companies think nothing of taking your personal information and selling it. This includes what movies and TV shows you watch. Data brokers purchase this information from the companies you subscribe to and then save that along with the huge file they already have on you and others so they can make predictions about your behavior. This data mining practice often ignores relevant research that shows that the decisions we make cannot be based on what we Tweeted yesterday, or what we watched last night on television. Data miners purchase, gathers, stores and sells. Since there is a huge market for our every move, including our smart TV entertainment habits, data miners keep buying, compiling, and selling. Employees of data mining companies report that if they don’t have a price of information in their dossier on any particular individual, they simply add it in themselves using the “educated guess” method. They feel that they can accurately predict our future and help insurance companies and banks make decisions about us based on what they have figured out.
If you don’t like to have your smart TV tracking what you watch and do online, then you might want to start using blockchain technology. As of right now, there isn’t much in the way of options when watching smart TV and safeguarding your viewing choices or privacy. Once you are signed in with your name and other identifying data, a record is kept of what you watched, when and even from what IP address. Then this information is sold. It matters not that someone else in your household, or a visitor or a friend might have watched a particular show or movie, it gets added to your file along with everything else.
While there isn’t much you can do right now about making your smart TV less nosy and intrusive, you can do something about your personal information being posted online. If you find that your name, address, telephone number and other data is on various websites, you can get control over that. Finding and using a well-rounded internet removal service will be helpful in your fight against data theft from data brokers and social media companies. Internet removal services can delete information that you don’t want easily available online and the best ones will periodically check to make sure it stays offline.
