How to buy a TV that is not listening to you, watching you and selling you as a product!
Learn how to buy a smart TV that respects your privacy. We compare TV operating systems and rank the best options that avoid spying on you.
Television is the only product in your home that got cheaper, better and more invasive at the same time, and those three facts are connected. This is a buying guide for anyone who wants a good picture without handing over a record of everything that appears on the screen. However it turns out there is no such thing as a safe TV in 2026 but there are good solutions if you read on...
The panel is the loss leader. You are the margin.
Screen quality that would have cost four figures a decade ago now sells for a few hundred pounds, and the reason is visible in the accounts of the companies doing it. Roku's 2025 filings show platform revenue — advertising and content distribution — of roughly $4.14bn against $592m from hardware, and its device segment ran at a gross loss in 2024. Vizio, now owned by Walmart, reached the point where every penny of gross profit came from its advertising and data business while the televisions themselves lost money. Industry analysts have described Roku and Vizio selling sets at margins of minus three to minus seven per cent.
That model has spread. Samsung and LG both run substantial in-house advertising divisions. LG bought a controlling stake in the television data firm Alphonso, which became LG Ad Solutions. Even budget badges are in it now: the operating systems fitted to supermarket and catalogue brands are licensed from companies whose business is selling the resulting viewing data.
Buy the panel. Don't buy the platform.
What the tracking actually does
Automatic content recognition
ACR is the main mechanism, and it works like Shazam for whatever is on your screen. The television periodically captures a frame or an audio sample, reduces it to a fingerprint, and sends that fingerprint to a server which matches it against a content library. The match tells the operator exactly what you are watching, second by second.
The important part for a buyer is that ACR sits in the operating system, below the apps. It is not confined to the manufacturer's own software. A peer-reviewed study presented at the 2024 ACM Internet Measurement Conference — run on a test bench in the United Kingdom as well as the United States — measured the traffic leaving Samsung and LG sets and found the heaviest flows during live aerial television and when the set was being used as a plain external display over HDMI.
Read that chart carefully, because it disposes of the most common assumption about smart televisions. Plugging a games console, a laptop, a cable box or a streaming stick into an HDMI port does not make the set a passive monitor. It fingerprints that too. The same study found that whether the user was signed in made no material difference, which suggests the tracking is keyed to the set's advertising identifier and network address rather than an account.
Microphones
Far-field microphones — the ones built into the television rather than the remote — are the feature worth checking on a spec sheet. Manufacturers generally describe wake-word detection as happening on the device, with audio discarded when no wake word is heard. Samsung's 2015 privacy policy is the historical marker here: it warned that spoken words including personal or sensitive information would be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party. Modern implementations are narrower, but the hardware is still in the room.
Cameras
Cameras have largely disappeared from consumer televisions but older TV's with cameras are still a high risk. The notable UK exception is Sky Live, an optional 12-megapixel camera that magnetically attaches to a Sky Glass set, with a 110-degree field of view and automatic subject and body tracking which has not been security tested yet but it certainly is intrusive.
The television as a route into your network
This is the part that should concern anyone responsible for a network rather than just a living room, and it gets far less coverage than the advertising story.
Modern televisions actively enumerate the local network. Manufacturers describe this as supporting connectivity and casting, which is a fair description of the intent. The September 2026 Gamers Nexus investigation reported LG sets scanning for unrelated hardware including phones and smartwatches belonging to people who were not involved in the testing, and logging the names and signal strengths of neighbouring wireless networks. LG says device discovery supports connectivity features and that nearby wireless data helps estimate approximate location when the relevant agreements have been accepted. Either way, the set holds a map of what else is on your network.
That matters because of what a television actually is: a long-lived Linux computer, rarely patched, frequently unsupported after a few years, sitting on the trusted side of your firewall. The vulnerability record is not reassuring. Bitdefender documented root-level flaws across LG's webOS versions 4 to 7, with more than 91,000 displays found exposed to the internet. Published vulnerabilities in TCL sets allowed an attacker on the adjacent network to retrieve system files including personal data and application security tokens. And the researchers working with Gamers Nexus reported remote-code-execution flaws to LG that, as of mid-September 2026, had not been publicly fixed.
A compromised television is not just a privacy problem. It is a foothold with a view of every other device in the house, and it is the one device nobody thinks to check.
The broadcast layer
One more mechanism, specific to Europe and rarely discussed. HbbTV, the standard behind the red-button layer on Freeview, is bidirectional by design. Research presented at NDSS in 2023 examined 36 channels across five European countries and concluded that the way the protocol is implemented can create serious privacy risks, with surveyed viewers showing little understanding of what they were exposed to.
What independent testing has established
How we scored each brand
Every score below is out of ten and reflects the privacy and security posture of the television as sold, before any settings are changed. These are our own editorial ratings, not measured values. We weighted five things.
Thirty-six TV brands ranked for privacy and security (best to worst)
Each entry carries the platform it runs, which recognition system collects the viewing data and who ultimately receives it, whether collection is on out of the box, what microphone hardware is fitted, and any regulatory or research flags attached to the brand. Where a value reads "varies by model", that is the honest answer — several of these badges are licensed to more than one manufacturer, so the set in front of you may not behave like the one next to it.
Linsar
A UK brand with no advertising division we can identify and no first-party recognition platform. It also carries almost no independent security testing, so this is a score built on absence of evidence. Check which operating system the specific model ships with before you commit.
6.0/10
FairCello
Small-scale UK assembly with no data business of its own. The smart layer changes between models, so the set's actual behaviour depends on whose software is inside rather than on the badge.
5.5/10
WeakLoewe
Premium German brand with no advertising arm of its own. Google's platform-level collection still applies, and ad personalisation is on by default.
5.5/10
WeakBang & Olufsen
Same position as Loewe. Low volume, no first-party data business, but the underlying platform collects regardless of what you paid for the cabinet.
5.5/10
WeakGrundig
Arçelik-owned and running Google's platform. No in-house recognition or advertising business, which is the whole of its advantage here.
5.0/10
WeakMitchell & Brown
A UK-market badge on Vestel hardware, so it inherits whichever platform Vestel fits to that chassis. Sold on long warranties rather than software, which is not a privacy feature but does mean fewer forced platform changes.
4.5/10
WeakMedion
Aldi's electronics badge, historically built by Vestel. Platform varies by model and year, and there is little public documentation of what each one does.
4.5/10
WeakBlaupunkt
The name is licensed to third-party manufacturers and carries no shared engineering. What you get depends entirely on who assembled the particular set, which makes it impossible to score the brand as a whole.
4.5/10
WeakMetz Blue
German brand, among the early Freely partners in the UK. No first-party advertising business identified, but almost no independent testing either.
4.5/10
WeakNokia
The television name is licensed to StreamView rather than built by Nokia. Google TV underneath, no advertising arm attached to the badge, and limited UK retail presence.
4.0/10
WeakThomson
Another heritage name now applied under licence. Depending on the model you are buying a Google TV set or a Vestel-built one, with entirely different data behaviour behind the same logo.
4.0/10
WeakDigihome
A Vestel white label sold through UK retail. Assume the same data pipeline as the other Vestel badges unless the specific model's documentation says otherwise.
4.0/10
WeakPanasonic
The main range moved to Amazon's Fire TV platform, so it inherits Amazon's advertising stack. Entry models are Vestel-built, and Panasonic is named directly in TiVo Ads' UK viewing-data licensing dataset.
4.0/10
WeakPhilips / TP Vision
Moved its entire 2026 range off Google TV to Titan OS, a platform marketed to manufacturers as continuous revenue beyond the hardware sale, with an advertising partnership attached. The commercial intent is stated openly in Titan's own materials.
4.0/10
WeakSony
Google's collection plus a long-standing relationship with the recognition firm Samba TV. Named as a defendant in the Texas ACR litigation, which remains unresolved, with no reported change to its practices.
3.5/10
PoorXiaomi
Google's platform beneath an interface with a long history of in-house promotion and recommendation surfaces. Limited UK retail presence compared with the rest of this list.
3.5/10
PoorHitachi
The Japanese company has not built these televisions for years. The badge is licensed to Vestel, and the data behaviour is Vestel's chosen platform, not Hitachi's.
3.5/10
PoorPolaroid
Another licensed badge on Vestel hardware, usually sold through supermarkets. Same platform, same pipeline, different sticker.
3.5/10
PoorLogik
Currys' own brand. Cheap and competent, but the smart layer is licensed in, so check whether the model ships with TiVo OS, Roku or Fire TV before assuming anything about its behaviour.
3.5/10
PoorLuxor
A Swedish name bought outright by Vestel in 2006 and used as one of its own brands. Everything that applies to the other Vestel badges applies here.
3.5/10
PoorTelefunken
A German heritage name whose televisions have been designed entirely by Vestel. The engineering heritage the name implies is not in the box.
3.5/10
PoorJVC
JVC left the television business globally in 2011; the name was revived under licence by Vestel. Whichever platform the model carries brings that platform's data business with it.
3.5/10
PoorSharp
Vestel-built for the UK and named directly in TiVo Ads' UK viewing-data licensing dataset, which sells recognition data as a standalone product independent of any media buy.
3.5/10
PoorHaier
Chinese manufacturer with a small UK television presence, running Google's platform. The jurisdiction questions raised against Hisense and TCL apply in principle, but there is no comparable body of testing or litigation to point at.
3.0/10
PoorFinlux
Vestel's own brand, and the first to carry Roku's platform in the UK under their partnership. That brings Roku's recognition system, which reads every HDMI input, onto a budget television.
3.0/10
PoorTechwood
Named in TiVo Ads' UK viewing-data licensing dataset alongside the other Vestel brands. A low price does not mean a low data footprint.
3.0/10
PoorBush
Argos' own brand, and the clearest illustration of the point. It is named in TiVo Ads' UK viewing-data licensing dataset, which means a two-hundred-pound catalogue television feeds the same kind of commercial pipeline as a flagship OLED.
3.0/10
PoorToshiba
The television business is 95 per cent owned by Hisense Visual, which is not apparent from the box. Depending on the model you may be buying Hisense's platform, Amazon's or Xperi's.
3.0/10
PoorRoku TV
Recognition covers the aerial and every HDMI input, including other streaming sticks and self-hosted libraries. It is not lower only because Roku's documentation is unusually plain about what it does and the controls are comparatively easy to find.
3.0/10
PoorAmazon Fire TV
Advertising-funded by design, with a voice assistant on the remote and viewing data feeding a retail advertising profile. Also the platform underneath several Panasonic, JVC and Toshiba sets.
3.0/10
PoorLG
Runs recognition through Alphonso, in which LG holds a controlling stake, and markets advertising reach across 216 million televisions. Settled the Texas case in May 2026 without admitting liability, and is the subject of a disputed September 2026 research investigation plus reports of unpatched remote-code-execution flaws. Its opt-out has been independently verified to stop the traffic, which is the one thing keeping it off the bottom.
2.5/10
PoorSamsung
The largest first-party television advertising business, and the heavier transmitter of the two brands measured in the UK study. Settled Texas in early 2026 and faces a US class action. As with LG, the opt-out is verified to work — but the default is collection.
2.5/10
PoorSky Glass
No published recognition system, but scored down for always-on far-field voice, a motion sensor that wakes the set as you walk past, an optional tracking camera, household advertising profiles matched at a data broker, and an aerial tuner that only works when the set is disconnected from the internet.
2.5/10
PoorSkyworth
A large Chinese manufacturer with a thin UK retail presence and almost no published detail about what its sets collect. Scored low because the jurisdiction questions raised against Hisense and TCL apply equally, without the countervailing benefit of any independent scrutiny.
2.0/10
AvoidTCL
Recognition supplied by Samba TV at chipset level across many brands. Subject to a live Texas lawsuit with no reported change in practice, an earlier US Homeland Security investigation into alleged backdoors, and published vulnerabilities permitting remote retrieval of system files including personal data and application tokens.
1.5/10
AvoidHisense
Recognition data licensed exclusively to Nexxen through at least 2029. The first television manufacturer ever placed under a restraining order over this technology, and the subject of a US class action alleging viewing data reaches its state-owned parent. Its platform has no published independent audit.
1.5/10
AvoidTwo names you may still see on shelves are absent because they have been retired: Alba was dropped by Sainsbury's in 2022 in favour of Bush, and Tesco's Technika is no longer produced. Both were Vestel-built and behaved accordingly. Vizio does not sell in the UK, but it belongs in the story as the brand that proved the model: an FTC settlement in 2017 over viewing histories collected without consent, followed by a business in which all gross profit came from advertising and data while the hardware lost money.
Streaming boxes ranked
The box matters more than the television, because it is the layer you actually use. Same scale, same criteria — with two extra rows of detail that decide whether a box is usable in a British living room: whether it runs the major subscription services, and how it handles free UK television.
Freeview, Freeview Play and Freely are three different things
Worth settling before the table, because it is the question that trips people up. Freeview is broadcast, through an aerial, and needs no internet at all — over 70 live channels, though only around 12 to 15 of them in HD. Freeview Play is the same broadcast line-up on a certified television or recorder, with catch-up apps bolted on; it adds no extra live channels. Freely is the newer platform from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, delivered entirely over broadband with no aerial or dish required.
That last point is worth stating plainly, because it is easy to assume a Freely box is a simple replacement for an aerial. It is not. Freely is streamed, so a Freely box is permanently internet-connected by design and cannot be run offline — the whole platform is a network service. It is the opposite of a standalone device, which is why we have included Freely boxes in the ranking below rather than treating them separately.
On whether Freely gives you everything: almost. It passed 70 live channels during 2026 and carries 35-plus in HD, far more HD than Freeview manages. But some smaller channels people actually watch are still missing, and broadcasters have also launched streaming-only channels on Freely that Freeview does not carry at all. So it is not a strict subset in either direction — slightly fewer of the long-tail channels, rather more HD, plus a handful of exclusives.
Apple TV 4K
No content recognition at all, no advertising on the home screen or screensaver, and a setup process that offers plain prompts to disable voice, location and analytics rather than burying them. App Tracking Transparency means a refused app receives a zeroed advertising identifier and cannot substitute a hashed email, phone number or device fingerprint. Apple still holds search and viewing history against your account, anonymised, and voice transcripts may be retained for up to six months.
9.0/10
GoodRaspberry Pi 5 or mini PC running LibreELEC and Kodi
Nothing leaves the device that you did not install, and pairing it with a Jellyfin server keeps your own library entirely off third-party infrastructure. The cost is real and should not be glossed over: content protection limits commercial streaming apps, often to lower resolutions, high dynamic range is effectively unavailable on Linux, and you maintain it yourself.
9.0/10
GoodVero V (OSMC)
Considerably more plug-and-play than building your own, and it does handle high dynamic range properly. It will not run commercial streaming services at all, so this is for people watching their own media.
8.0/10
GoodNvidia Shield TV Pro
Android-based, so Google's platform collection applies, but there is no manufacturer recognition layer bolted on top and the hardware has been supported for an unusually long time. It can also be reflashed with an alternative Android build if you want Google removed entirely.
6.0/10
FairGoogle TV Streamer
No manufacturer recognition system, but Google's own collection across the platform is extensive and ad personalisation is the default state.
4.0/10
WeakRoku streaming stick or box
The sticks and boxes do not carry the recognition system that Roku's own televisions do, which is a genuine distinction. They still gather viewing data for advertising profiles, and advertising is the company.
4.0/10
WeakDedicated Freely box — Manhattan Aero, Netgem PLEIO, Humax Aura EZ
The only route to Freely on a television that does not have it built in, which matters most to Samsung and LG owners. These are fully networked streaming devices, not aerial adapters, and they must stay online to work at all. Privacy-wise they are unremarkable, and the Manhattan Aero in particular runs TiVo OS — the same platform behind the UK viewing-data licensing business described earlier in this article.
3.5/10
PoorAmazon Fire TV Stick
Advertising-funded, voice-enabled, and the viewing data joins a wider Amazon profile. Convenient and cheap, which is the trade being offered.
3.0/10
PoorThe television's own built-in platform
Whatever the badge, this is the layer that runs recognition, serves home-screen advertising and enumerates your network. Leaving it unused is the single largest privacy improvement available to anyone who already owns a smart television.
2.5/10
PoorThe other kind of box: "fully loaded" sticks
No article about television privacy in Britain is complete without this, because roughly four million UK households are estimated to be streaming paid content without paying for it, usually through a modified streaming stick or a subscription to an unlicensed IPTV service. The devices are generally ordinary hardware — the Amazon name has become a catch-all term rather than an accurate one — that has been modified to run software from outside the official app store.
The legal position is the part most people have heard about, and it has hardened considerably. What has changed more quietly is the security position, and it is worse than the legal one.
Those first three figures come from research for BeStreamWise, a cross-industry initiative whose backers include Crimestoppers, the Premier League, the BBC, ITV and Sky, so read them with that context — but the direction of travel is corroborated by independent work. A study of the illicit streaming economy published in 2026 found that nearly half of the pirate streaming applications tested contained malware capable of harvesting personal data, compromising devices and recruiting them into botnets. Academic analysis of illicit IPTV sites has found malicious URLs and files across the majority of the sample, including one exhibiting ransomware behaviour.
Sky Glass deserves its own section
Sky Glass is a UK-specific product and a different shape of problem, so a straight comparison undersells it. We found no published recognition system — but the data arrives by other routes.
Buying on credit also means two separate agreements: a fixed-sum loan for the television, typically over 48 months, and a distinct contract for the service.
What we actually recommend
Best overall
Buy the best panel your budget allows, skip the network setup entirely on first boot, and put an Apple TV 4K on HDMI 1. Use the aerial tuner for live television. Recognition needs the set online; an offline television cannot fingerprint, advertise or enumerate your network.
Best value
If you are going offline anyway, a Hisense or TCL Mini-LED becomes a sensible buy despite sitting at the bottom of our table. The objection to those brands is almost entirely about software and jurisdiction. Never connect it and you are buying an excellent panel for considerably less.
If it must be connected
Choose Samsung or LG and actually complete the opt-out. They are the only two brands whose controls have been independently shown to stop the traffic, and both now operate under binding consent orders that are likely to shape their engineering globally.
Offices and installations
Use a commercial signage display or a large 4K monitor. No consumer smart platform, no home screen, no account, and built for long duty cycles. Add a soundbar and drive it from whatever source you already trust.
Locking down a television you already own
Keep the TV off the network
If you can, skip wireless TV setup entirely and drive everything from an external box plus the aerial tuner (aerial TV is often not an option these days and will soon be discontinued). If the set is already connected, remove the credentials or block its hardware address at the router. Don't plug in a network cable either and if the Wi-Fi won't disable, consider changing the password.
Turn off content recognition
On LG this is Live Plus, under General, System, Additional Settings, plus the viewing information and interest-based advertising agreements under Privacy & Terms. On Samsung it is Viewing Information Services under Terms & Privacy. On Roku it is Smart TV Experience under Privacy. However this permission change is sometimes ignored, so it can never really be trusted.
Disable the microphone
Switch off voice recognition in settings and use the physical microphone switch if the model has one. Remove the batteries from a voice remote you never use. Some have hidden mics, so keeping it offline is safer.
Move the streaming smarts to a box (the no.1 solution)
Put an Apple TV (its a streaming box not an actual TV) or another device from the ranking above on HDMI 1 and stop using the television's own apps. The built-in platform is the layer doing the collecting. So make sure the TV remains offline and the Apple TV is the device that stays online.
Separate it from everything else (only for IT gurus)
If the set must be online, put it on a guest network or a dedicated VLAN alongside the other smart-home hardware, so a compromised television cannot see your laptops, servers or backups. Do not forward ports to it, and turn off UPnP unless something genuinely needs it. Keep the firmware current.
Filter at the router as a last resort but don't rely on this
Run a DNS filter such as Pi-hole, NextDNS or AdGuard Home with the smart-television blocklists enabled. This catches the endpoints that ignore the on-screen toggles, and it protects every device in the house rather than one but sometimes the TV's don't do domain lookups and use IP addresses which bypass this protection.
Re-check the settings after major firmware updates. The menus move between platform versions, which is why any single set of instructions has a short shelf life — and why treating a television as a networked computer, rather than an appliance, is the correct mental model. If you want that thinking applied across the rest of your network, our cyber security and network installation services start from the same principle.
Want your network checked properly?
We audit what your devices are actually sending, segment the ones that shouldn't see everything, and lock down the rest.