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Let’s be clear: smart TVs are a privacy nightmare. Almost all of them keep track of everything you watch, even when you’re using an HDMI cable, and send it off to analytics firms, advertisers, and who knows who else. In capitalist America, TV watches you.
A common piece of privacy advice, given this, is to disconnect your smart TV from the internet and use an Apple TV to do your streaming instead. And there is merit to this advice: Apple’s streaming box collects far less private information than a standard smart TV while still providing a straightforward, remote-based user interface with support for all the major streaming services.
Having said that, it’s not as though Apple collects no data. And using an Apple TV means buying a $130+ streaming box, on top of the price of your TV, which adds up quickly if there are multiple TVs in your home. With this in mind, let’s break down the privacy pros of an Apple TV over using the operating system in your smart TV.
No automatic content recognition
You know that common myth about smartphones listening to your conversations and showing you ads? It’s not true, at least not of your phone. But it’s not far off from how TVs work.
Almost every smart TV on the market uses technology called automatic content recognition (ACR) to create a record of everything you do on TV. You can think of this technology as similar to the music recognition service Shazam, but for TV shows, movies, and video games instead of music. Software like this is constantly running in the background of your TV, creating an ongoing list of everything you watch. That data is then sold to and shared with various third parties. Notably, this data collection happens even while you’re using an HDMI port, meaning marketers out there know exactly how much time you put into Elden Ring over the past few years.
Companies like Inscape and Samba actively brag about the data they collect using this technology on their websites. Their software, or software like it, is installed on basically every TV on the market right now. The Apple TV, notably, does not employ this technology, and doesn’t keep a record of what you watch inside applications. This is the clearest privacy benefit of using an Apple TV over your smart TV’s interface.
Apple does gather some data (and might grab more)
Having said that, Apple TV devices do record some data—just a lot less than similar devices. Over at Ars Technica, Scharon Harding wrote a breakdown of the privacy pros and cons of an Apple TV, which you can read if you really want to get into the finer points of this issue (along with speculation about how things might change). She concluded that the Apple TV is the most private streaming gadget, which I agree with.
For the most part, Apple devices offer you a lot of control over your data. When you set up a new Apple TV, the device asks you whether you want to share analytics data with Apple—you can easily opt out before using the device. You are also asked whether you want to enable location services and Siri. If you enable Siri your voice recordings are sent to Apple servers for processing. Following a class action lawsuit, Apple doesn’t store this information anymore, unless you explicitly agree to it.
Apple TVs also give you a lot of control over what information the apps you install have. Apps can access information including your location, your photos, other Apple-stored media, and your HomeKit data, but only if you allow them to (there will be a pop-up asking you whether you want to grant permission). You can also decide which, if any, applications you want to grant access to tracking features. It’s a level of control that’s not common in smart TVs, to say the least.
The Apple TV app is the centerpiece of an Apple TV and even offers a hub to watch content from other streaming services. This app records what you watch in order to make recommendations and to serve ads inside the app. You can turn this tracking off in the settings. The TV app also shares “non-personal” data, including viewing activity and demographic information, with “strategic partners.” All of this is standard practice for a streaming service, but worth keeping in mind.
Overall, though, the Apple TV itself—as opposed to applications running on the device—don’t collect much information about you or your viewing habits.
Is there anything better?
Maybe you’re uncomfortable with Apple having any information about you. What’s the best app to get then? There’s not really a great answer. You could set up a computer, or a Raspberry Pi, and install a privacy-centric Linux operating system on it. Then you could set up a privacy-focused browser to watch your shows. This will give you a slight privacy edge over the Apple TV with a few obvious downsides.
The first being that you’ll likely need to control everything with a mouse and keyboard. (Once upon a time you could work around this using Kodi, but plugins for most streaming services stopped working ages ago.) Put simply: if you want a single device you can buy, plug into your TV, and watch common streaming apps using a remote control, Apple TV is the most privacy-centric device you can buy and use that way.
