If you own an Internet-connected TV, you've been seeing these for 2 years or more. I submitted it 11 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21427405) and it wasn't new then.

The ACR-based retargeting audiences (https://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsungads/resources/tv-...) are probably the most offensive. For example: "Reach viewers who saw your competitor’s ads as quickly as 60 seconds after linear ad airing." Since they're capturing and analyzing screenshots from all TV inputs (even HDMI sources), they can target based on not just what you're watching, but which ads you've seen. Games, movies, apps, whatever - they're capturing the actual image you're seeing in realtime.

I maintain a list of deep links to opt-out of data collection and sharing, mostly just because it pisses me off: https://simpleoptout.com/ . My site includes all of the TV manufacturers and TV OSes, but Samsung is easily the worst. As I wrote: "distinctly less customer-friendly than its peer companies. If it can be retained and shared, it probably is."

TedDoesntTalk

> If you own an Internet-connected TV, you've been seeing these for 2 years or more

How to prevent all Samsung tracking and advertising:

1. Factory reset your Samsung TV.

2. When promoted to accept the Samsung EULA, select no/reject

3. Attach computer or streaming stick to Samsung HDMI port (Windows, mac, chromebook, appleTV, chromecast, Amazon Firestick, Roku stick). I use an ancient PC with Linux Mint installed. You can use KODI or Plex if you like that interface, but I don’t.

4. Select that HDMI input on the TV.

5. Enjoy streaming video with Samsung-free ads and Samsung-free tracking

Optional but recommended: Logitech wireless K400 keyboard/touchpad ($20)

fapjacks

Hello! I would like to recommend to everyone one of the few utilities I've found in the last few years which blew my socks off, called x2x [0]. It is a small console program you can use to link your X session with a remote session (over SSH), so that you can move your mouse off your current laptop (or whatever) desktop and onto the remote "TV computer" desktop, and type things into that desktop with your keyboard. I'd been dreaming about this for years before I randomly stumbled on it. You can run it and just forget about it since it isn't literally streaming a series of JPGs like VNC. I've been using it with ZERO problems now for a couple of years exactly for this purpose.

[0] https://github.com/dottedmag/x2x