9 Smart TV Settings Michiganders Should Turn Off Tonight

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sued Roku in 2025 over how the company handles information from kids who use its TVs.

The case is still ongoing.

Roku isn’t the only smart TV brand collecting more than viewers realize.

These are the smart TV settings Michiganders should turn off tonight.

1. Samsung’s Viewing Information Toggle

Samsung’s smart TVs collect what you watch through a feature called Viewing Information Services, a version of automatic content recognition that many models turn on by default during setup.

It’s opt-out, not opt-in.

Samsung’s support page for the feature walks through the fix: Open Settings, then Support, then Terms & Privacy, then Privacy Choices, and uncheck both Viewing Information Services and Interest-Based Advertising.

Unchecking both stops Samsung from building a profile of your viewing habits and matching ads to it.

The menu sits a few screens deep.

The switch still belongs to you.

2. Samsung’s Microphone Switch

Samsung builds a physical microphone switch into the lower edge of its smart TVs, the same one that turns Bixby’s voice listening on or off.

The switch needs no app menu.

Slide it off, and voice commands stop working altogether.

Samsung’s instructions say the commands stay off until you slide the switch back.

A TV that can’t hear you can’t record you by accident, either.

3. LG’s Live Plus Setting

LG’s smart TVs run their version of automatic content recognition under a feature called Live Plus.

Live Plus fingerprints whatever is on screen and sends that data to LG Ad Solutions roughly every 15 seconds.

That’s regardless of the source.

Cable, a streaming app, a game console, and a disc all trip the same fingerprint.

The toggle sits under Settings, All Settings, General, System, and Additional Settings on current webOS TVs, though LG has moved it between software versions before.

Search “Live Plus” in the settings menu if it isn’t where you expect.

4. LG’s User Agreement Toggles

LG separates its consent settings from Live Plus, tucking Viewing Information, Voice Information, and Interest-Based Advertising into a separate screen.

LG’s support page for the process places all three under Settings, All Settings, Support, Privacy and Terms, and User Agreements.

LG’s walkthrough there only covers a blanket “Select All, then Agree” step.

Independent tech reporting on that same screen says the three items can be withdrawn individually instead of accepted or declined as a group.

You can turn off Viewing Information, Voice Information, and the advertising consent.

5. Vizio’s Viewing Data Setting

Vizio’s smart TVs ran one of the earliest automatic content recognition settings in the business.

The company paid for building it first.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and New Jersey fined Vizio $2.2 million in 2017 for tracking eleven million televisions’ viewing habits without permission and passing that data to advertisers.

Consent is required now.

Current Vizio sets keep the toggle at All Settings, Privacy & Legal, Viewing Data.

Older Vizio TVs keep it at All Settings, Admin & Privacy, Viewing Data instead.

Switching it off stops new collection, though Vizio doesn’t erase what it already gathered.

The Smart TV Setting Behind the Others

Automatic content recognition (ACR) is the mechanism behind three of these smart TV settings: Samsung’s Viewing Information Services, LG’s Live Plus, and Vizio’s Viewing Data.

The software matches what’s on your screen to a database of shows, movies, and ads every few seconds.

That happens whether the picture comes from cable, a streaming app, a game console, or a disc player.

Turning off one app’s ad settings doesn’t switch off ACR.

It runs at the television’s operating system, watching the screen itself instead of any single app.

6. Roku’s TV-Input Tracking

Roku collects viewing data from cable boxes, antennas, and game consoles plugged into its TVs through a feature called Smart TV Experience.

A federal court in the Eastern District of Michigan let the core Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act claim in the state’s 2025 lawsuit against Roku move forward this spring.

Roku’s settings for the feature sit at Settings, Privacy, Smart TV Experience, where deselecting “Use Info from TV Inputs” stops the collection going forward.

Roku keeps whatever it already gathered before you turned it off.

7. Roku’s Ad Personalization Setting

Roku also runs a separate ad-tracking setting on top of its viewing data, built around a resettable identifier tied to your device.

Roku’s documentation places the controls at Settings, Privacy, Advertising, where a Limit Ad Tracking toggle stops personalized ads and a Reset Advertising Identifier option wipes the ID clean.

Each reset erases your trail.

Roku passes your preference along to streaming apps and channels, but says it can’t force any of them to honor it.

8. Fire TV’s Interest-Based Ads Toggle

Amazon’s Fire TV devices use the same smart TV setting under a different name, the Advertising ID.

Amazon’s help pages place the toggle at Settings, Preferences, Privacy Settings, Your Advertising ID, where switching Interest-Based Ads off stops Fire TV from using that ID to target you.

You’ll still see ads.

They just won’t be built from what you’ve been watching.

Psst! Every one of these takes under a minute to check. See how locked-down your smart TV setup already is.

9. Google TV’s Advertising ID

Google TV and Android TV models run a version of the same advertising setting through a device-level ID Google also uses on phones and tablets.

Google’s support page for the setting sits at Settings, Privacy, Ads.

A Reset Advertising ID option there assigns a new identifier, and a Delete Advertising ID option removes it from ad personalization.

Nothing carries over.

Deleting the ID doesn’t just leave a blank space behind: An app that checks for it afterward gets back a string of zeros instead of your old identifier.

Apps can still show you ads without that ID, just built from whatever other information they’ve already collected instead of your device’s advertising history.