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What I learned was that your smart tv can collect any info it wants from you and whenever it wants. I also learned that the tvs spying has found a way into everyone's life and is becoming a big problem. I also learned that there is ways that you can stop it. It is important to others because many people dont know this but need to know this and they need to know how to stop it.

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Learn about how Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has researched on how you can stop your tv from spying on you

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What do you know. The tin-foil hat brigade was right. Your smart TV may very well have been spying on you for the CIA and MI5. I can't say I'm surprised.

Smart TVs are dumb. They have little security, their interfaces tend to be crap, and, oh yes, many smart TV models were already spying on you for their vendors.

I'm not just talking about tracking what you watch and when. Everyone does that. Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, etc.

If that worries you, go back to rabbit-ear TVs and dumb DVD players. You aren't going to be a happy couch potato in today's internet-entwined television world.

But smart TVs go far beyond tracking what you watch. I'm talking about some far more sneaky actions. Your smart TV may well be listening in to your conversations and even watching you from its built-in video camera.

Sound like science fiction? Nope, it's already happened.

Take my Vizio M50-C1 50-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV. It's a great TV with an excellent display. It just has this one little problem: When I first got it, it was tracking my viewing habits and sharing this data with advertisers... by default.

This Smart Interactivity "feature" works by watching what I watch -- whether it's by cable or streaming. It also records the date, time, and channel of programs and if I watched the show live or recorded. Vizio then takes all that data and connects it to my Internet Protocol (IP) address. With that much data, any big data analyst can know more about me -- and not just my television watching habits -- than my family does.

Vizio has changed its ways. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) forced Vizio to stop its snooping.

Then, there's Samsung. It was revealed last year that some Samsung smart TV models can "capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features."

OK, I can buy that. But, "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition."

I'm not happy with that. And I'm downright ticked off that Samsung doesn't properly encrypt this data when it sends it home over the internet.

And we can't forget LG. In 2013, LG wasn't sure if its smart TVs were spying on you or not. I think we can safely assume it was spying.

So, what can you do? Well, it depends, as always, on the brand and model.

On the Vizio, which is the most troubling since it's the only company -- that we know of -- that spies by default, you can turn off Smart Interactivity by following these steps from your TV.

1. Press the menu button on your TV's remote.

2. Select settings.

3. Highlight Smart Interactivity.

4. Press right arrow to change setting to off.

The other TVs should be safe so long as you have the voice recognition features turned off.

"Should."

You see I really don't trust any of the TV vendors. The more data they can get about you, the better for their bottom line. And, come on, LG -- you didn't know if you were sucking data from your customers?

Even if you assume the TV vendors care about protecting their customers' data, they don't have the necessary security and network chops to protect your data. TV companies may be experts making great displays, but they're not networking or security pros.

For example, Samsung's data leak came about because its smart TVs were sending data over the 443 TCP socket. That sounds good. That's the default socket for the secure HTTP over SSL protocol. What it was actually sending over this port was a mess made up of XML, binary packets, and some raw, unencrypted data.

I'm no hacker, but I could crack that. When the news broke that intelligence agencies were hacking smart TVs, that really wasn't news. It would've been news if they hadn't cracked such easy targets.

As South Korean security expert Seung-Jin Lee showed in 2013, there's no security worthy of the name in most smart TVs. Lee showed 10 different vulnerabilities that would allow him to get a root shell on the device.

Root? Yes, you see this particular TV ran all of its applications as root. Which means, for those of you not from the Unix/Linux world, that a cracker would get absolute control over the "smart" TV.

I am absolutely sure there has been no improvement in smart TV security since then.

So, what can you do?

Well, for starters, don't buy smart TVs in the first place. Apple TV and Roku, to name two, supply pretty much everything a smart TV does and more. Sure, they can have security holes as well, but at least they're designed by people with a clue about security and network engineering.

What's that? You already have a smart TV? Bite the bullet, disconnect it from the internet, and turn it into a dumb TV.

First, check to see if your TV will let you disconnect from your Wi-Fi network. If it won't, reset it to its factory default setting. When it turns on again and goes through its setup routine, don't give it your Wi-Fi password.

If you're using Ethernet, do the same thing -- except this time, you simply don't plug it into your network.

Yes, this is drastic. But you really can't trust smart TVs.

Don't want to go that far? Then go deep through your TV's list of commands and turn off anything that indicates it's listening to you or sending data back to its home company. That may not work, but at least you'll have tried.

And, if you think that's bad, just wait until you add more Internet of Things devices to your home. Are you going to be able to keep track of what your car is saying about your driving habits, or what your electrical use tells about when you're at home? Heck, what your health insurance provider thinks about the fact that you only use an IoT-enabled toothbrush once a day?

No, you're not going to be able to manage this non-stop bleeding of personal data.

Me? I've lived on the internet for longer than many of you have been alive. I appreciate what it gives me, especially with television, but I choose to keep the TV vendors out of my personal life. I think you should too.
Related Stories: VIDEO: Twitter doesn't want police mining tweets to track protestors

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​How to keep your smart TV from spying on you | ZDNet

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What do you know. The tin-foil hat brigade was right. Your smart TV may very well have been spying on you for the CIA and MI5. I can't say I'm surprised. Smart TVs are dumb. They have little security, their interfaces tend to be crap, and, oh yes, many smart TV models were already spying on you for their vendors.

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Learn more about how your tv may be spying on from RT news.

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Total Surveillance : Your Smart-TV IS spying on you (Nov 22, 2013)

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Tips to keep your personal data private 

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Tips to keep your personal data private 

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Here are some ways to protect yourself from your tv.

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There's a good chance your smart TV is spying on you. Smart TVs often analyze the videos you're watching and report back - whether you're watching live TV, streaming videos on a service like Netflix, or playing local video files. Worse yet, this can be a security problem.

TVs should really just be dumb displays. Smart TVs not only have bad interfaces, they spy on what you're watching even when you aren't using those smarts. Their security practices are often pretty bad, too.

The Problem

RELATED: Smart TVs Are Stupid: Why You Don't Really Want a Smart TV

Modern smart TVs often have "features" that inspect what you're watching and report it back to some company's servers. This data can be sold to marketers, or it could be tied to you somehow to create a better ad-targeting profile. Really, you're not getting anything out of this - the TV manufacturer just makes some more money with this data. Vizio just made headlines because such a feature is enabled by default on Vizio smart TVs.

This tracking doesn't just apply to the smart TV's apps - even if you plug in a Roku or Apple TV and stream something from Netflix, the TV can analyze the picture it's displaying and report that data back. It may report back on the channel number you're watching if you're watching live TV, or the filenames of local video files on a USB drive plugged into your smart TV.

Smart TVs also have questionable security protections. Vizio TVs transmitted this tracking data without any encryption, so other people can snoop on the snooping. They also connect to a server without checking it's a legitimate server, so a man-in-the-middle attack could send commands back to the TV.

Vizio says it's fixed this problem and TVs will automatically update to a new firmware. But are those smart TVs even checking to ensure they're downloading legitimate firmware files with correct digital signatures? Based on TV manufacturers' cavalier attitude to security in general, we're concerned.

Some smart TVs have built-in cameras and microphones - if the security is so shoddy in general, it would theoretically be possible for an attacker to spy on you through your TV.

Just Don't Connect Your TV to Wi-Fi or Ethernet

Just don't connect your smart TV to your home network and you'll be protected from whatever built-in spying features it has and any security vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

Don't connect your smart TV to your Wi-Fi network. If you have, go into your smart TV's settings and disconnect it from the Wi-Fi. Don't connect it to the network with an Ethernet cable, either. If you've already connected to the Wi-Fi network, try to get your smart TV to forget the password. If you can't, you may need to reset it to its factory default settings - don't give it the Wi-Fi password when you set it up again.

This will also prevent your smart TV from embedding extra advertisements into other things you watch - yes, some Samsung smart TVs actually do that!

Get "smarts" on your TV by plugging in a streaming box like an Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV, video game console, or one of the many other devices that works better and should be more secure than your smart TV. That box can be connected to the Internet.

Try to Disable the Spying Features (Not Recommended)

We recommend you just disconnect your smart TV from the network and be done with it. If it can't connect to the Internet, it can't cause you any problems - full stop. You won't want to use its smart features when you can just use a superior streaming device, anyway.

If you do want to leave it connected to the network, you could try to disable the spying features. This will be a different process on different models of TVs.

Worse yet, just toggling the option may not do anything. Even if you don't agree to Vizio's privacy policy when setting up the TV, Vizio still enables the snooping features on your TV. Disabling the spying features may also not prevent the TV from being exploited through its security holes. New spying features could be automatically added in firmware updates.

If you really want to disable the spying features instead, you'll find them somewhere in your TV's settings menu. On Vizio TVs, this setting is named "Smart Interactivity" and it may be buried under System > Reset & Admin. Here are Vizio's instructions for disabling it.

LG smart TVs may have a "Collection of watching info" setting. On some Samsung smart TVs, you can head into a "Smart Features" menu and disable "Voice recognition" to disable always-listening voice commands. Other smart TVs from other manufacturers may have many different settings named different things from model to model.

This is part of a larger problem with " the Internet of things," which envisions modern appliances - everything from your toaster to the blender, microwave, and fridge - becoming "smart" and connecting to the network. As we've seen with Android smartphones, most device manufacturers don't seem capable of creating secure software and updating it. Smart appliances sound alright, but the reality - spying and security holes - seems like a serious problem.

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How to Stop Your Smart TV From Spying on You

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There's a good chance your smart TV is spying on you. Smart TVs often analyze the videos you're watching and report back - whether you're watching live TV, streaming videos on a service like Netflix, or playing local video files. Worse yet, this can be a security problem.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/17eq9tHGDQMbEX4MnzeMNaRQ-UfXRDr3lFB790E7LIVw/edit

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Body Paragraph 3-how are people taking own action

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Body Paragraph 3-how are people taking own action

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One of the ways they can do something is they can turn the spying features off so the tv won’t record what they say and do. Another thing people are doing is they are taking the smart tvs completely out of the picture and just going back to their old tvs that don't have these advanced features. The buyers of the tv can also report what is happening with the smart tv’s to the agencies and see if they will do anything. 457 people have talked to the agencies about their tvs. They could also leave a bad report about the tv which could possibly affect the outcome of the sales of smart tvs. Over 3,000 people have had complaints about the Samsung smart tv

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My three subtopics were who is collecting the info and making tvs, what information are they trying to find, and how are people taking own action.

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Body Paragraph 2-what info are they trying to find

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Body Paragraph 2-what info are they trying to find

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The companies are collecting info such as what when and how you watch tv. A report was made that a man and his kids were watching tv and the next day he saw his kids faces on the internet. they claim they are using what they collect for advertising and recommendation purposes. They can sell your data to other manufacturers. They record the apps you use, the websites you visit, how long you watch it, how you interact with content and when you view content and emails.The cameras in the tvs also recognize your faces. Your face can be put on any websites and will be sent to the database and kept forever.

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Body Paragraph 1-Who is collecting info and making tvs

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Body Paragraph 1-Who is collecting info and making tvs

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The companies that have spying TVs are LG, Samsung,  and Vizio. Samsung is giving you a warning that the data captured will be sent to a 3rd party. Anyone that has access to the data base can look at what your TV captured. Tv companies are inviting the "Big Brother" which is the government to have your personal data and do what they please with it.

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I chose smart tvs because I didn't know much about it and it seemed like an interesting topic to learn about.