Vizio may be reaching a settlement in its TV data-tracking class action lawsuit, in which the TV company could pay up $17 million in response to tracking its customers’ viewing habits (discovered back in early 2017), although the deal is subject to final approval.
Vizio nears $17 million settlement for TV data-tracking lawsuit
The deal is still subject to final approval
The deal is still subject to final approval
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge
Since it was first discovered that Vizio was spying on its users’ viewing habits, the company already paid $2.2 million to the Federal Trade Commission in a previous settlement in 2017, in addition to promising that it would ask permission from users before tracking viewing habits and demographic data to sell to advertisers.
The new settlement is in addition to the $2.2 million paid in an FTC lawsuit in 2017
According to Vizio, the tracking could have impacted roughly 16 million Vizio customers in the US who used their smart TVs between February 1st, 2014, and February 6th, 2017. (That makes the $17 million sum a bit less exciting if it’s divided up among all those customers.)
Additionally, as part of the settlement, Vizio is agreeing to update its prompt for opting out of tracking, changing the language from “agree/settings” to “accept/decline.” It will also add an additional disclosure in the quick start guide that’s included with new TVs, and, most importantly, it will delete all the viewing data it collected prior to February 6th, 2017, when the data tracking was first discovered.
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