It instructs users to press the “Menu” button on their remote or open their HDTV Settings app, navigate to “system,” then select<br />“Reset & Admin.” After highlighting “Smart Interactivity,” they can press the “Right” arrow and change the setting to “Off.”<br />The company, based on a stipulated order, must delete data collected before March 1, 2016 — before it sent the pop-up on data collection —<br />and “prominently disclose and obtain affirmative express consent for its data collection and sharing practices.”<br />In an email responding to questions from , Vizio said<br />that it had a new, prominent opt-in notice sharing information about the collection of its viewing data, and that “only users which ‘accept’ ACR data collection will be enrolled in ACR data collection.”<br />It’s also worth noting that this order is separate from a class-action lawsuit<br />Vizio is fighting in California around the tracking software in its TVs.<br />But the agencies’ complaint noted that Vizio provided IP addresses to data aggregators<br />that would remove a person’s name, but still match the TV viewing habits to other personal information like “sex, age, income, marital status, household size, education, homeownership and household value.”<br />Vizio, which filed for an initial public offering in 2015<br />that did not happen, said at that time, it collected “up to 100 billion anonymized viewing data points each day” from its TVs.<br />The complaint says that Vizio has manufactured TVs since at least February 2014 with software turned on by default<br />that collects “information about what a consumer is watching on a second-by-second basis.” It also was said to have remotely installed the software, a proprietary form of automated content recognition, or ACR, software, onto TVs sold without it.
