Samsung and the State of Texas have settled a legal dispute over how the company collected viewing data through its smart TVs.
The issue began last December when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against several smart TV manufacturers, including Samsung. The lawsuit claimed that these companies used a technology called Automated Content Recognition, or ACR, to collect information about what people were watching without first getting clear and informed consent.
ACR technology works by capturing small snippets or screenshots of what appears on a television screen. This allows the system to identify the content being watched. According to the allegations, Samsung used this data to support targeted advertising. In simple terms, the more the system knew about what a person watched, the more specific the ads could become.
In January, Texas briefly obtained a temporary restraining order that aimed to stop Samsung from collecting viewing data from consumers in the state. A court found there was good reason to believe that users may not have been properly informed. The restraining order was lifted the following day, but the lawsuit continued.
One of the main concerns in the case was how consent was handled. The court noted that customers may have been automatically enrolled in Samsung’s Viewing Information Services system. It also pointed out that privacy disclosures were difficult to access. Reports suggested that users had to go through more than 200 clicks across multiple menus just to read the full privacy statements.
The court described this setup as using “dark patterns,” meaning the design may have made it harder for consumers to clearly understand what they were agreeing to.
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Under the settlement agreement, Samsung will revise its privacy disclosures to better explain how it collects and processes viewing data. The company must also stop collecting or processing ACR viewing information from Texas consumers unless it first obtains clear and express consent. In addition, Samsung is required to update its smart TVs with more visible and straightforward consent screens so that users can make informed choices about their data.
