Your smart TV may be prey for hackers and collecting more info than you realize, 'Consumer Reports' warns

If you’ve snapped up a smart TV, with built-in Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and other Web connections, heads up on this warning — your smart TV could make you vulnerable to hackers and is probably monitoring more of your viewing than you realize. Consumer Reports just analyzed smart TVs from five big U.S. TV brands — Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL and Vizio — and found several problems. All can track what consumers watch, and two of the brands failed a basic security test. 

How bad is the security? So poor, according to its report, that hackers were able to take over complete remote control of the TVs from Samsung and TCL's branded Roku TV, which included changing channels, upping the volume, installing new apps and playing objectionable content from YouTube.   "What we found most disturbing about this was the relative simplicity of" hacking in, says Glenn Derene, Consumer Reports' senior director of content. 

Gary Ellison, Roku’s VP of trust engineering, posted a blog item holding that Consumer Reports “got it wrong,” at least with respect to how Roku's platform was characterized. “This is a mischaracterization of a feature,” he wrote. “It is unfortunate that the feature was reported in this way. We want to assure our customers that there is no security risk.”