ZDNet – As TV operating systems become smarter, they present new privacy concerns. Here’s what automatic content recognition (ACR) is all about – and why you should consider turning it off. Did you know that whenever you turn on your smart TV, you invite an unseen guest to watch it with you? These days, most popular TV models utilize automatic content recognition (ACR), a form of ad surveillance technology that gathers information about everything you watch and transmits it to a centralized database. Manufacturers then use your data to identify your viewing preferences, enabling them to deliver highly targeted ads. What’s the incentive behind this invasive technology? According to market research firm eMarketer, in 2022, advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads, and those numbers are only going up. To understand how ACR works, imagine a constant, real-time Shazam-like service running in the background while your TV is on. It identifies content displayed on your screen, including programs from cable TV boxes, streaming services, or gaming consoles. ACR does this by capturing continuous screenshots and cross-referencing them with a vast database of media content and advertisements…”
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases
Follow up on previous post – Amazon removing the ability to download your purchased books – The Verge: “Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you’re not really buying an ebook or video game. Wyden’s letter, shared with… Continue Reading
Trump expected to take control of USPS, fire postal board, officials say
Washington Post [unpaywalled]: “This is something that does not belong to the president or the White House. It belongs to the American people. That goes for everything else they’re trying to steal too.” The move threatens to upend trillions of dollars in e-commerce business and the 250-year-old Postal Service. President Donald Trump is preparing to… Continue Reading
Google’s new policy tracks all your devices with no opt-out
digitaltrends: “Google has begun enforcing new tracking rules across connected devices, such as smartphones, consoles, and smart TVs, as BBC reports. The tech giant once called the fingerprint tracking technique “wrong” in 2019, but has since reintroduced it.Google has commented that other companies broadly use the data, and it started using it on February 16,… Continue Reading
Amazon removing the ability to download your purchased books
The Verge: “Starting on February 26th, 2025, Amazon is removing a feature from its website allowing you to download purchased books to a computer and then copy them manually to a Kindle over USB. It’s a feature that a lot of Kindle users are probably not aware of, given books can be more easily sent… Continue Reading
Musk associates access confidential info about X’s competitors via CFPB takeover
Musk Watch and Bloomberg – “Just nine days before his DOGE team visited CFPB, Musk’s X — the former Twitter — announced that it had struck a deal with Visa to process peer-to-peer payments. Musk has publicly mused about expanding into payment-services since he first took control of X in 2022. Entering that business could… Continue Reading
As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders
Ars Technica: “Two years ago, a Canadian writer named Cory Doctorow coined the phrase “enshittification” to describe the decay of online platforms. The word immediately set the Internet ablaze, as it captured the growing malaise regarding how almost everything about the web seemed to be getting worse. “It’s my theory explaining how the Internet was… Continue Reading
As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders
Ars Technica: “Two years ago, a Canadian writer named Cory Doctorow coined the phrase “enshittification” to describe the decay of online platforms. The word immediately set the Internet ablaze, as it captured the growing malaise regarding how almost everything about the web seemed to be getting worse. “It’s my theory explaining how the Internet was… Continue Reading
Bookshop.org enters the e-book arena, giving indie stores a new way to compete with Amazon
Salon: “Bookshop.org founder and CEO Andy Hunter joked that the e-books question has been the bane of his business’ social media manager’s existence for a while now. “Every day she has people ask her, ‘When are e-books coming? When are e-books coming?’” Now Bookshop has an answer. On Tuesday, it launched a new digital platform… Continue Reading
Data brokers can keep selling your social security number, says new CFPB chief
The Verge: “Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent has been named the Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the bureau announced today. Bessent quickly instructed the agency to “to stop all rulemaking, communications, litigation, and other activities,” reports Bloomberg Law. A source inside the CFPB told Bloomberg Law that his order “appeared to shut… Continue Reading
Meet the tracking companies that follow you around the internet
Datawrapper – “Considering the cookie consent banners that have come to grace our screens on a daily basis, it might not come as a surprise that companies are interested in extracting data from your online activities, and that browsing the internet is not exactly a private affair. Still, it is hard to grasp how this… Continue Reading
FTC Surveillance Pricing Study – Wide Range of Personal Data Used to Set Individualized Consumer Prices
“The agency details interim insights from staff perspective examining how companies track consumer behaviors to inform surveillance pricing. The Federal Trade Commission’s initial findings from its surveillance pricing market study revealed that details like a person’s precise location or browser history can be frequently used to target individual consumers with different prices for the same… Continue Reading
