Vizio eventually accumulated “as many as 100 billion data points a day from millions of TVs,” which it then sold to advertisers. “Consumers didn’t know that while they were watching their TVs, Vizio was watching them,” the FTC wrote in a blog post following the settlement. What’s more, Vizio identified viewing data from cable or broadband service providers, set-top boxes, streaming devices, DVD players and over-the-air broadcasts. Add it all up and Vizio captured as many as 100 billion data points each day from millions of TVs. The company provided consumers’ IP addresses to data aggregators, who then matched the address with an individual consumer or household.

Source: Huffington Post February 07, 2017 06:33 UTC