Vizio Fined $2.2 Million For Illegally Monitoring Viewer Habits: Here's Why

Television manufacturer Vizio, Inc. has come under fire after settling charges with the Federal Trade Commission and agreeing to pay a $2.2 million fine after it was disclosed that the company installed software on its TVs to collect viewing data on 11 million consumers without their knowledge or consent.

The Issues And Concerns

According to the complaint, it was Vizio’s “Smart Interactivity” feature that enabled program suggestions and tracked viewing data without notifying users.

Vizio was recently bought by Chinese firm LeEco for $2 billion last July.

A stipulated federal court order “requires VIZIO to prominently disclose and obtain affirmative express consent for its data collection and sharing practices. It also requires the company to delete data collected before March 1, 2016, and to implement a comprehensive data privacy program,” said the FTC in a press release.

Vizio Spying On Its Users

Vizio had been tracking as many as a billion data points of information per day from the millions of TVs it has sold since 2014, and it wasn’t general viewership trends either, but accurate data on specific content users were tuned into.

The latest personal data breach is bringing some light to the industry and a report from The Verge claims that most other TVs and streaming boxes “are very likely still tracking your TV habits in one way or another, and they probably aren’t as clear about it as Vizio now has to be.”