Samsung announced at CES 2020 today that it is going to be bringing a new app to its smart TVs, it’s a privacy app. Called, Privacy Choices.
But, it’s not what you think. This app is for privacy awareness and not protection. Which means protecting your own personal data is still going to be up to you.
The app is set to come out later this year, Samsung doesn’t yet have a date as to when it is expecting it to be available.
Privacy Choices will be available on all Samsung Smart TVs
According to Samsung, the new app is going to be coming to all of its smart TVs.
But what exactly will it do? Well, Samsung was pretty tight-lipped about it actually. But the company did mention that it will let you see what data the TV has collected about you. However, there’s no word on whether you’ll be able to do anything about it. Like deleting that data or keeping the TV from collecting that data.
What’s important to remember here though, is that while you can see your digital footprint, you won’t be able to stop other companies from grabbing your data.
For instance, Amazon Prime, Spotify, Netflix, will still see your watching habits. Since that is all taking place on their servers and not just on your TV.
Why do smart TVs collect so much data?
There’s two main reason why smart TVs collect all of this data about you. It’s data it can use to sell you things like a new TV, or a movie from Google Play Movies & TV. The other way is by selling this data to third-parties. But you don’t need to be too concerned about that, as that data is anonymized.
With smart TVs collecting all of this data, companies are able to sell these TVs for much less.
Last year, Vizio’s CEO did an interview at CES and explained that if Vizio didn’t collect all this data and just sold a “dumb” TV, it would cost at least twice, if not three times as much. Collecting this data is allowing companies to subsidize the cost of TVs.
In a way, you are being paid for your data, though it’s not the way that we all want it to be done. Data is the most powerful currency out there right now, and every company collects it, for better or worse.