SMART TV OR I SPY TV?

While much has been made recently about “smart” devices, a new television set may just have crossed the line from smart into snooping.

Smart phones have been around for years. To the average user the term indicates a phone that does more than make and receive phone calls and can access and surf the internet. With the increase in broadband usage more and more devices began to be connected to the internet. For example, in a typical home it is not uncommon for the computer, DVD player and wireless phones all to be using a home network to access the internet. 

When this happens, the devices share an IP address which can be linked to other devices on the same network. This is one of the reasons security experts warn about the importance of individuals securing their home wireless network. There have been instances where a person logged into an unsecured wireless network and illegally downloaded videos or music. The authorities were then able to trace the download to the IP address and threaten to prosecute the homeowner for the downloads. 

Over the years, advertisers and others have been attempting to take advantage of this connectivity by tracking individual habits to use for targeted advertising. This individual surfing information has been used to recommend choices to customers such as when Netflix recommends films to a person based on their viewing habits. 

However, Vizio is going a step further by not just recommending viewing choices but going so far as to share it with advertisers. Vizio refers to its new tracking system as “Smart Interactivity,” and unlike other smart TV sets by Samsung and LG Electronics which require you to opt-in, Vizio automatically turns on the feature. 

Vizio analyzes snippets of the shows you’re watching, whether on traditional television or streaming Internet services such as Netflix or Hulu. This information includes the date, time, channel of programs, as well as whether you watched them live or recorded. The viewing patterns are then all connected to your IP address.

Under current law, consumers are protected from having smart technology being used to gather what is known as personally identifiable information and pass it along to others. 

However, Vizio says its smart interactivity does not violate the law when it gives the information to third parties because all they are revealing are individual IP addresses. However, having access to this information can be used to find out a great deal of information about a person. Data collector Experian is currently touting a “data enrichment” service that includes age, profession and “wealth indicators” tied to a person’s IP address.

The problem is that since these types of databases are not government owned, a person’s normal Fourth Amendment protections do not apply. As these companies amass greater and greater databases, the possibility of a real-life version of Skynet found in the Terminator movies is becoming a real possibility. 

Most experts believe the smart TV tracking is just one of the many steps to the "Internet of everything" where your home, your vehicles, your appliances and every single electronic device that you own is constantly connected to the Internet. 

With each passing year, the number of devices connected to the Internet continues to grow at an exponential rate. The Internet has become such an integral part of our lives that it is hard to remember how we ever survived without it. 

Most of us will willingly join the Internet of things without stopping to consider the ramifications of every decision we make being recorded and tracked, from what milk we drink to what TV shows we watch.

As all of this information becomes digital it would seem only a matter of time before Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies will know us better than we know ourselves.