Samsung Smart Tvs are Sending Screenshots of What You Watch Back to Samsung ByBill Toulas-January 3, 2020.503 Users who consent to the terms and conditions of the Iba services on Samsung TVs have their viewing preferences registered. Samsung collects everything you’re watching from what Netflix shows to what Tv channels you want. This Video Privacy Protection Act should have already been revised to cover digital services but not so. As verified by the privacy policy of Samsung, the smart TVs of the Korean tech giant take screenshots of what users are watching and send them back to their mom. It may sound far-fetched, but it is real, and the average consumer agrees with it when the app is first enabled when the privacy policy is completely addressed. More precisely, the agreement comes when the consumer tries to allow the Iba (Internet Based Vertising) service. Of course nobody pays attention to that stuff and people just push the “accept” button that opens the door to consuming media without knowing what they’ve given their consent to. The company then uses various technologies to categorize and analyze the data collected, including the Acr technologies (Automatic Content Recognition). It is not decided or explained whether or not actual human reviewers are in the process, but it can not be ruled out either. This clearly poses a significant problem of privacy invasion although it does not happen on illegal or blurred grounds. On the contrary Samsung provides all the juicy details in the agreement on privacy policy. The TV creator is however teetering on a rope extending above the limits of the Video Privacy Protection Act passed by Congress in 1988. As the Private Internet Access blog points out, exchanging rental history of the customers and viewing habits with third parties is illegal for video rental stores. There is no allowance for streaming alternatives such as Netflix, because the statute is so old. It means that what Samsung does is technically legal but their activities are pretty much immoral based on what is easily deduced from the spirit of the law. Still gathering user data for targeted advertising purposes is something everyone does not just Samsung so the underlying regulation has failed the end-user on multiple levels and across the full spectrum of the goods we use today.