Automatic Content Recognition (ACR)

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Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) is a feature in certain kinds of devices manufacturers use to collect consumer data, visuals and audio, at periodic intervals, which grants the manufacturing companies access to the private data of consumers automatically. ACR allows the manufacturing companies of Smart TVs access to information like:

1. Content being viewed
2. Connected devices
3. Time and date of the viewing
4. Duration of the content

ACR is an opt-in feature buried beneath the EULA, turned on by default.

Consumer Data

Using harvested data, the consumer's data is used to push targeted content to the consumer such as polls, and advertisements.

Consumer data is also often sold, and has allowed Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to become a four billion dollar industry, projected to double in value by 2030 to 10 billion USD from selling consumer data to advertisers, without knowledge.

Due to the nature of a majority of smart devices, the kind of data being stored is usually sensitive. Devices that are always on, for example, Amazon Echo, Apple HomePods, and Google Nest models, which are always on, are constantly in a state of monitoring. And the corresponding apps to control the device prompts a lot of personal information, such as an email, address, location, contacts and sometimes photos. This puts a name and person to the data they are collecting.

A study was done on the data collected from smart security system apps, and found that outdoor security cameras collected 50% more than data than smart home apps.

Data Collected by Outdoor Security Cameras: 

1. Email addresses
2. Phone numbers
3. Payment information
4. Location

Data Collected by Indoor Security Cameras: 

1. Email addresses
2. Phone Numbers
3. User IDs
4. Device IDs
5. Purchase history
6. Audio

These lists aren't exhaustive.

The gathered data then has the possibility of being intercepted at three different points:

1. The device which hosts the app
2. During the data transmission of the device and cloud
3. In the cloud