Everyday Privacy
Smart Home Devices and Your Data: What They Collect
The short version
Smart TVs are the quietest collectors: most identify everything on screen and report it for advertising until you switch off a setting usually called viewing information or viewing data. Smart speakers send your requests to the cloud, and Alexa now sends all of them. Video doorbells record your street, store clips on company servers, and can reach police through legal requests, emergencies, or voluntary sharing. Regulators have fined Ring, Amazon, and Vizio over exactly these practices. Ten minutes in the settings cuts most of it.
Why your home devices are a data problem
Smart home devices are sensors that live where you are most unguarded. A doorbell sees who visits and when, a speaker hears what you ask for, and a TV knows what you watch. Each sends that data to a company whose business often depends on advertising, and regulators have repeatedly found the controls were weaker than promised.
These devices are now ordinary. Parks Associates, which surveys thousands of US internet households every quarter, reported that 68% had a smart TV in its November 2024 release, 51% owned a smart speaker or smart display in early 2025, and 20% had a video doorbell in 2023, up from 4% in 2017. Most of those devices were set up once and never revisited.
That matters because the defaults favor collection. The rest of this guide goes device by device: what each collects, who can end up with it, and the exact settings that shrink it.
Smart TVs: the device that watches you back
Most smart TVs use automatic content recognition, or ACR. It samples what is on screen, matches it against a database, and logs what you watched. That includes cable, antenna, game consoles, and DVDs, not just the TV's own apps. The record is used to target ads, and some of it is sold.
The FTC documented how far this goes in February 2017. Vizio agreed to pay $2.2 million to the FTC and New Jersey after regulators said it collected "second-by-second information about video displayed" on about 11 million TVs, starting in February 2014, without telling owners. Vizio attached sex, age, income, and other demographics to viewing records and sold the data to third parties, including for targeting ads to consumers across their other devices.
The practice did not end there. On December 15, 2025, the Texas Attorney General sued Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL, alleging ACR could capture screenshots of the display every 500 milliseconds and that the companies used dark patterns to steer people into it. Samsung settled in February 2026 and LG in May 2026; both agreed not to collect ACR data without consent.
How to turn off ACR on your TV
Every major TV brand lets you switch ACR off, but none calls it ACR, and the toggle sits several menus deep. The paths below come from the manufacturers' help pages and Consumer Reports' October 2025 guide. Menus change between model years, so search your TV's settings for the setting name if a step does not match.
- Samsung: Settings, All Settings, General & Privacy, Terms & Privacy, then turn off Viewing Information Services.
- LG: Settings, All Settings, Support, Privacy & Terms, User Agreements, then turn off Viewing Information. This is the data behind LG's Live Plus feature.
- Roku TVs: Settings, Privacy, Smart TV Experience, then turn off Use info from TV inputs.
- Vizio: Settings, Privacy & Legal, then turn off Viewing Data. Older models put it under Admin & Privacy.
- Amazon Fire TV: Settings, Preferences, Privacy Settings, then turn off Collect App and Over-the-Air Usage.
While you are there, turn off ad personalization and reset the TV's advertising ID if it has one. Our guide to opting out of targeted ads covers the same controls on phones and browsers.
Smart speakers: what gets recorded and kept
A smart speaker listens on the device for its wake word and sends audio to the company's servers once it hears it, or thinks it did. False wake-ups mean private conversation sometimes gets sent. What happens next, whether audio is kept, transcribed, or reviewed, depends on the company and your settings.
Amazon narrowed your options in 2025. Three Echo models, the Echo Dot (4th Gen), Echo Show 10, and Echo Show 15, offered a Do Not Send Voice Recordings setting that processed requests on the device. Amazon ended it on March 28, 2025, tying the change to its Alexa+ AI features. Every Alexa request now goes to Amazon's cloud. Owners who had the setting on were switched to one that deletes recordings after processing.
Google took the opposite default in September 2019: it does not keep Assistant audio unless you opt in through the Include voice and audio activity control. It does keep a text record of requests. Apple agreed in January 2025 to pay $95 million to settle a class action over Siri recording people after accidental activations, while denying wrongdoing.
Kids and voice assistants
Children talk to smart speakers more freely than adults, and that makes their recordings especially sensitive. In May 2023 Amazon paid a $25 million civil penalty after the FTC and Justice Department said it kept children's Alexa voice recordings and geolocation data for years and undermined parents' deletion requests.
According to the FTC, Amazon kept transcripts of children's requests even after parents asked for the recordings to be deleted, and used the data to improve its Alexa algorithm. The case was brought under COPPA, the federal children's privacy law. The order requires Amazon to delete inactive child accounts and certain voice and location data.
If a child uses a speaker in your home, set up a supervised child profile rather than letting them use yours, review the voice history regularly, and turn on automatic deletion. Our guide on protecting kids' privacy online covers the other apps and devices in their lives.
Video doorbells: your street, their servers
A video doorbell records everyone who walks past, not just visitors: neighbors, delivery drivers, and kids on the sidewalk. Most store those clips on company servers by subscription, which means the company's security and staff practices matter as much as your own password.
The FTC found those practices failed at Ring. In its May 2023 settlement, Ring paid $5.8 million after the FTC said it let any employee or contractor access customers' private videos, and that one employee viewed thousands of recordings of female users over several months, including from cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms. The FTC also said Ring did not add multi-factor authentication until 2019, after hackers got into accounts of about 55,000 US customers and used two-way audio to harass people, including children.
Ring now offers optional end-to-end encryption, which means only your enrolled phone can decrypt your clips. The trade-off is real: Ring's support pages list many features that stop working with it on, such as shared users, viewing on a computer or Echo Show, and several AI detection features.
Who else can see your doorbell footage
Police can get doorbell video three ways: with a warrant or other legal demand, through a company's emergency policy, or by asking owners to share it. The first two do not need your consent. The third is voluntary, but it is built into the app so the request lands on your phone.
In July 2022, Amazon told Senator Ed Markey that Ring had given police footage 11 times that year without the owner's consent or a court order, under an emergency policy for imminent danger of death or serious injury. Ring shut down its police Request for Assistance tool in January 2024, then in October 2025 announced Community Requests, which let police ask Neighbors users in an area to share video, with partners Axon and Flock Safety.
After a backlash to Ring's February 2026 Super Bowl ad for Search Party, an AI feature for finding lost pets, Ring cancelled the Flock integration on February 12, 2026. Ring and Flock both said no videos had been shared. The Axon partnership was not reported as cancelled.
What regulators have already found
Enforcement against smart home companies is not hypothetical. The FTC, state attorneys general, and private plaintiffs have extracted penalties from four of the biggest names in the category, and the complaints read like a list of the exact risks owners worry about: strangers watching videos, kids' recordings kept, and TVs selling viewing habits.
| Company | Year | Amount | What was alleged |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vizio (FTC and New Jersey) | 2017 | $2.2 million | Collected second-by-second viewing data on about 11 million TVs without consent and sold it |
| Ring (FTC) | 2023 | $5.8 million | Staff could access private videos; weak security let hackers take over about 55,000 customers' accounts |
| Amazon Alexa (FTC and DOJ) | 2023 | $25 million | Kept children's voice recordings and location data for years and undermined deletion requests |
| Apple Siri (class action) | 2025 | $95 million | Recorded users after accidental Siri activations; Apple denied wrongdoing |
Source: FTC press releases of February 6, 2017 and May 31, 2023 (two releases); CNN, January 2, 2025, on Lopez v. Apple.
Texas's 2025 lawsuits against five TV makers are the newest front. Two of them had settled by May 2026, and the cases against Sony, Hisense, and TCL were still pending as of that point.
Settings that actually reduce collection
You do not need to throw devices out. A short checklist, done once and repeated after major updates, removes most of the collection described above. Start with the TV, since it collects the most by default and has the simplest fix, then work through speakers and cameras.
- TV: turn off ACR and ad personalization using the paths above, or keep the TV offline and use a streaming stick.
- Alexa: in the Alexa app, open Alexa Privacy and choose to have voice recordings deleted automatically. Review and delete old history.
- Google: leave Include voice and audio activity off and set Web and App Activity to auto-delete after 3 months.
- Amazon Sidewalk: this shared network, on by default for Echo and Ring owners since June 2021, borrows a slice of your connection. Turn it off in the Alexa app under Account Settings or in the Ring app's Control Center.
- Cameras: turn on multi-factor authentication, use a unique password, set motion zones to exclude the street where you can, and consider end-to-end encryption.
- Mute and shutters: use the physical mic mute and camera shutter on speakers and displays in bedrooms.
For the rest of your phone and accounts, our privacy checklist for beginners walks through the same routine.
What settings cannot fix
Device settings limit what flows out of your home, but they do not touch the profile already built about you elsewhere. Your name, address, phone, and relatives sit on people-search sites whether or not your TV is snooping, and those listings are what lets a stranger turn a doorbell clip or a username into a front door.
Smart home data also joins a wider market. The same ad-tech buyers that want viewing habits also buy location data from your phone and driving data from your car. Each stream is less useful alone than matched to a real name and address.
That is the piece you can check today. RedactZero's free exposure scan checks an email against known breaches, looks for a username across public profiles, and lists the data brokers likely to have a profile on you, without storing anything you scan. The free, dated opt-out steps for each broker are in our removal guides, and more everyday fixes are in the Everyday Privacy section.
See what is already public about your household
Your devices are one leak. People-search listings with your address and phone are another. Run a free scan to see which breaches and data brokers already have your details - no account, nothing stored.
Frequently asked questions
Is my smart TV watching what I watch?
Probably, unless you turned it off. Most smart TVs use automatic content recognition, which identifies what is on screen, including from cable boxes and game consoles, and reports it back for advertising. Every major brand has a setting to switch it off, usually under Privacy.
Does Alexa record everything I say?
No. An Echo listens locally for its wake word and only sends audio to Amazon after it hears it, or thinks it did. Since March 28, 2025, every Alexa request is processed in Amazon's cloud, because Amazon ended the local-processing option on the three Echo models that offered it.
Can police get my Ring doorbell footage?
With a warrant or other legal request, yes. Ring also shares footage without consent in emergencies, which it did 11 times in 2022 according to Amazon's letter to Senator Markey. Separately, Ring's Community Requests feature, launched in October 2025, lets police ask Neighbors users to share video voluntarily.
Can Ring employees watch my videos?
The FTC found that Ring once let any employee or contractor access customers' private videos, and one employee viewed thousands of recordings of female users. Ring's 2023 settlement requires a privacy and security program. Turning on end-to-end encryption means only your enrolled phone can decrypt your clips.
What is Amazon Sidewalk and should I turn it off?
Sidewalk is a shared network that lets Amazon devices borrow a small slice of your internet connection to help nearby devices, capped at 500MB per month. It was switched on by default for Echo and Ring owners in June 2021. You can turn it off in the Alexa app or Ring app.
Are Google Nest speakers saving my voice recordings?
Not by default. Since September 2019, Google has not kept Assistant audio unless you opt in. Google does keep a text record of your requests under Web and App Activity, which you can set to auto-delete after 3, 18, or 36 months.
Does turning off ACR delete what my TV already collected?
Usually not. Turning it off stops future collection. Roku, for example, says data gathered while the setting was on is kept after you switch it off. To ask for deletion of past data, use the manufacturer's privacy request form or a state privacy right if you have one.
Is it safer to use a TV without connecting it to the internet?
It is the most private option. A smart TV that never connects cannot send viewing data anywhere. Many people plug in a separate streaming stick instead, which still collects app usage but does not watch your cable box or consoles the way built-in ACR can.
Sources: Federal Trade Commission press releases on Vizio (February 6, 2017), Ring (May 31, 2023), and Amazon Alexa (May 31, 2023); The Record and Texas Attorney General releases on the December 2025 smart TV lawsuits and the Samsung and LG agreements; Consumer Reports, "How to Turn Off Smart TV Snooping Features" (October 2025); Roku, Vizio, and Samsung help and privacy pages; TechCrunch, March 15, 2025; Google Account Help and Engadget, September 23, 2019; CNN, January 2, 2025; Senator Ed Markey press release, July 13, 2022; CNBC, January 24, 2024, October 16, 2025, and February 12, 2026; CBS News, February 2026; Ring support pages on end-to-end encryption and Amazon Sidewalk; Parks Associates releases of September 2023, November 2024, and October 2025.