Lawsuit Accuses LG, Samsung, Sony, Hisense & TCL TVs Of Spying On Users

by Aaron Leong — Wednesday, December 17, 2025, 10:03 AM EDT

Texas has declared war on your smart TV's data collection, alleging that certain screens at the center of American homes are actually sophisticated surveillance tools designed to monitor the viewing habits of every user.

As such, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton initiated a series of lawsuits against five of the world’s most prominent smart TV manufacturers: Samsung, LG, TCL, Sony, and Hisense. The legal action alleges these companies have systematically bypassed consumer privacy by transforming their hardware into data-harvesting engines. According to the state’s filings, these devices are active participants in an invasive digital economy that tracks, records, and sells the intimate habits of millions of users without their informed consent.

The filing states that central to this data-mining problem is Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), which is used in TVs to capture digital fingerprints of whatever is being displayed on the screen in real-time. It does not matter if a family is watching a live news broadcast, playing a video game, or streaming a private video via a connected device, as the claimant asserts that ACR identifies the content and reports it back to the manufacturer’s servers. By doing so, companies can build comprehensive profiles of users, which are then sold to advertisers and data brokers to facilitate hyper-targeted marketing.

ken paxton bio1 — *Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton*

The lawsuits further allege that these companies have violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by using dark patterns and convoluted UIs to trick users into agreeing to this surveillance. While manufacturers often point to opt-in screens during the initial setup process, the state contends these prompts are intentionally misleading or buried within hundreds of pages of legalese. In many cases, users are led to believe that if they do not agree to the tracking, their expensive new television will lose its smart functionality, essentially coercing them into a lopsided digital contract where the price of admission is their personal privacy.

Of note, Hisense and TCL are receiving a particularly sharp edge of the litigation with the Attorney General highlighting the companies' ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The lawsuit frames this specific instance of data collection as a national security concern, suggesting that a foreign government could potentially gain insight into the daily lives and preferences of American citizens through the sensors and software in their bedrooms and dens.

“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” said AG Paxton.

Main photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Santeri Viinamäki