Urgent Television Lawsuits: Privacy Settlements and Class Actions

Smart TV privacy lawsuits now target every major television brand sold in the United States. In December 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense, and TCL, alleging their televisions use software that captures what’s on your screen every 500 milliseconds and sells the resulting data to advertisers without meaningful consent. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop. Cases against Sony, Hisense, and TCL remain active, and private class actions are moving through federal court.

What Your Smart TV Is Actually Doing

The technology at issue is called Automated Content Recognition, or ACR. According to Texas’s filings, ACR software embedded in the TV takes a screenshot of whatever is displayed every half-second. It monitors streaming apps, cable, and anything plugged into an HDMI port, including game consoles, Blu-ray players, and laptops. The data is sent back to the manufacturer in real time, where it is used or sold to build advertising profiles.¹

Texas calls ACR a “surveillance-by-default” system that turns televisions into “mass surveillance systems.” The Samsung petition alleges viewing patterns can be used to infer race, religious and political beliefs, sexual orientation, health interests, and family composition.²

The Deceptive Practices Alleged

The Texas suits, filed December 15, 2025, allege violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The state’s theory is that manufacturers misrepresented their data collection and failed to disclose ACR before purchase, inducing people into transactions they would not otherwise have made.²

The complaints describe a consistent pattern across brands:

Explanations of ACR were buried in dense legal language inside multi-screen setup flows, so users consented with a single click without understanding what they had agreed to.³
Samsung allegedly used manipulative design patterns the state calls “Privacy Zuckering” and “Roach Motel” to funnel users into opting in during initial setup.²
Opting in on a Samsung took one click. Opting out allegedly required more than 15 clicks across four or more menus.³
LG labeled its data collection system a “Viewing Information Agreement,” which the state argues fails to tell users the system captures audio and video in real time.⁴

Texas is seeking civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, and up to $250,000 per violation involving consumers 65 or older. The state also wants permanent injunctions, restitution, and legal costs.³

The China Concern for Hisense and TCL

The complaints against Hisense and TCL add a national security dimension. Both companies are based in China. Paxton warned that under China’s National Security Law, the Chinese government could compel either company to turn over data collected from American consumers, which he described as creating risks of corporate espionage and the potential compromising of public officials.⁵

On January 5, 2026, a Texas state court issued a temporary restraining order against Hisense, prohibiting the company from collecting, using, sharing, selling, or transferring ACR data within the state. A separate TRO was issued against Samsung.⁶

Where Each Case Stands

Samsung Settlement

Samsung reached an agreement with Texas on February 26, 2026. The deal requires Samsung to stop collecting or processing ACR viewing data from Texas consumers without first obtaining express consent, and to rewrite its on-screen privacy prompts with “clear and conspicuous” disclosures.⁷ No financial penalty was publicly disclosed. Paxton called Samsung “one of the first smart TV companies in the world to make these important changes.”⁸

LG Settlement

LG followed on May 11, 2026. Under its agreement, LG must display a pop-up disclosure explaining how viewing data is collected and used, provide a simple opt-out, and prohibit the transfer of viewing data in any form to the Chinese Communist Party. LG did not admit wrongdoing.⁹¹⁰ No financial penalty was publicly disclosed.

Sony, Hisense, and TCL

The cases against Sony, Hisense, and TCL remain active as of mid-2026.⁷ Texas also indicated plans to amend its complaints to add claims under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act if the companies did not cure the alleged violations within 30 days.⁴

One point worth being clear on: the Samsung and LG agreements with Texas apply to Texas consumers. The state’s lawsuits do not create nationwide relief on their own, though manufacturers often extend policy changes beyond the jurisdiction that forced them.

Consumer Class Actions in Federal Court

Private plaintiffs have filed their own suits. On January 9, 2026, five Samsung TV owners filed a federal class action in the Southern District of New York, DiGiacinto, et al. v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. The complaint alleges Samsung violated the federal Video Privacy Protection Act by disclosing viewing data to third parties, including Google and X. The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages, injunctive relief, and a jury trial.¹¹

Hisense faces a parallel class action filed May 12, 2026, in the Northern District of California. Five named plaintiffs allege Hisense’s ACR captures sounds and images every 500 milliseconds and redistributes the data to third-party ad-tech partners and the company’s Chinese parent entities. They claim violations of federal and California privacy and surveillance laws and are seeking class certification, injunctive relief, and monetary and punitive damages.¹²

The Vizio Case That Set the Baseline

The current lawsuits build on an earlier enforcement action. In 2017, the FTC and the New Jersey Attorney General alleged that Vizio had been tracking the viewing of more than 10 million smart TV owners since 2014. Vizio’s system, marketed as “Smart Interactivity,” collected pixel samples second by second and matched them to a content database. The company used IP addresses to tie viewing to specific households and collected up to 100 billion data points per day.¹³

Vizio paid $2.2 million, deleted previously collected data, and agreed to obtain affirmative opt-in consent going forward, along with 20 years of third-party compliance monitoring. The FTC classified television viewing activity as “sensitive information,” a designation it had previously reserved for financial data, health records, Social Security numbers, and information about children.¹⁴

That standard, affirmative opt-in consent for ACR, is what Texas has now extracted from Samsung and LG nearly a decade later.

What You Can Do With a Smart TV Now

If you own a Samsung or LG television, the settlements require those companies to offer a clear opt-out and, going forward, to seek your express consent before collecting ACR data. For other brands, the opt-out is still buried in menus that may take more than a dozen clicks to navigate, according to the Texas filings. Checking the privacy or settings menu for anything labeled viewing information, content recognition, or interest-based advertising is the practical starting point, and declining those options is what the settlements and the Vizio precedent describe as your right.

1
Texas Attorney General. Attorney General Paxton Sues Five Major TV Companies Including Some Ties CCP Spying Texans
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Texas Attorney General. Samsung TV Petition Filed
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Ars Technica. Texas Sues Biggest TV Makers Alleging Smart TVs Spy on Users Without Consent
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MediaPost. Texas Sues Smart TV Companies Over Privacy
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Texas Attorney General. Consumer Alert Ken Paxton Warns Texans About CCP Aligned Smart TVs Are Spying on Them
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IAPP. Automated Content Recognition Technology Takes Privacy Enforcement Spotlight
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Texas Attorney General. Attorney General Paxton Secures Major Agreement Samsung Ensure Texans Are Protected Smart TVs
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Malwarebytes. Samsung TVs Stop Spying on Viewers in Texas Heres How to Disable ACR Anywhere
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Texas Attorney General. Attorney General Ken Paxton Secures Major Agreement LG Protect Texans Privacy and Stop Data Being
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KVUE. AG Paxton LG Data Collection Agreement
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Top Class Actions. Samsung Class Action Alleges TVs Illegally Track Viewing Data to Sell for Profit
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Legal Newsline. Class Action Says Hisense Chinese TVs Spying on Americans
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FTC. What Vizio Was Doing Behind TV Screen
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PBS NewsHour. Vizio Tracked Sold User Data Millions Smart TVs FTC Says