← IoT Privacy Database

TCL Smart TV

TCL Technology · Smart TV

Staff Reviewed — a person at DeSpy reviewed this rating.

7.5Surveillance
Index
Policy — what its policy permitsF
Evidence — what research provesF

Uses third-party ACR to build viewing/usage profiles and can access camera/microphone for video chat and remote-diagnosis screenshots with consent; named in the Texas AG's Dec 2025 five-TV-maker lawsuit.

Why this rating

TCL uses third-party ACR to build viewing profiles and was named in the Texas AG's December 2025 lawsuit against five TV makers over allegedly non-consensual mass surveillance via smart TVs.

What it is

Manufacturer
TCL Technology
Category
Smart TV
Model years
2015-present
Market status
Current
Companion app
TCL Home

The evidence 2

Independent research, regulatory action, lawsuits and journalism about how this device handles personal data — the "what actually happens" axis. Each links to its source.

  1. S5Court Rules Docket — TX v. Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, TCL (2025-12-15)
    Lawsuit · CourtRules.app · 2025-12-15

    Docket record of the Texas Attorney General's consolidated lawsuit against Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense and TCL over smart TV ACR data practices.

    Why it matters here: Court docket confirms TCL as a named defendant.

  2. S5Texas Sues Biggest TV Makers, Alleging Smart TVs Spy on Users Without Consent
    Lawsuit · Ars Technica · 2025-12-01

    Texas AG sued Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL and Hisense in December 2025 alleging their smart TVs conduct automatic content recognition amounting to mass surveillance without adequate consent.

    Why it matters here: Texas AG lawsuit names TCL's ACR-based smart TV tracking.

Are you the maker? Respond to this finding

Free. There is no paid or faster path, and nothing about a rating is for sale. Prove you control your company's domain with one DNS record; a person then reads your statement beside our finding and decides whether to publish it.

An email is encrypted at rest and opened only to answer you; it is erased 30 days after we resolve this (or 180 days if still open), and you can erase it sooner. Unproven filings are deleted after 14 days.

Think something here is wrong?

Evidence and research improve when people push back. Tell us what to re-check — a misattributed domain, an outdated classification, a claim about your own app — and a human will review it. Responses can take up to 30 days.

If you leave an email it is encrypted at rest and opened only to answer you — never shared, never used for anything else. It is erased 30 days after we resolve this (or 180 days if it is still open) without you asking, and you can erase it sooner at any time; either way your correction stays, anonymously. Leave it blank and your request is fully anonymous from the start (we store no IP address either way).

Descriptive, cited, not legal advice; ratings are versioned and corrections create a new version. Data from the IoT Info Grabber DB research project, CC BY-SA 4.0.

← Back to the IoT Privacy Database