Apple TV is missing a key feature. That’s a good thing

Most smart TVs and streaming players use a specific tracking feature to snoop on your streaming activities. But Apple’s streaming box doesn’t—or at least, not yet. 

Taking an in-depth look at how the Apple TV deals with privacy, Ars Technica reveals that a technology called automatic content recognition, or ACR, isn’t part of the device’s software stack. 

A popular feature amongst smart TV and streaming device manufacturers, ACR is a feature that acts like a “detective taking fingerprints,” literally tracking every pixel displayed on the screen and matching them to a massive database of TV programs, all in the effort to find out what you’re watching. 

In some cases, ACR is employed in a way that benefits cord-cutters. For example, some Roku TVs will use ACR to find streaming episodes of a show you’re watching via an over-the-air antenna or a cable tuner.  

That’s certainly helpful, but here’s the real reason streaming manufacturers love ACR: more cash in their pockets. Advertisers and other third parties will pay handsomely for the viewing data gathered by ACR software, which is often how Amazon, Roku, and other players in the streaming market manage to sell their TVs and streaming players for such low prices. 

If the idea behind ACR sounds creepy, it is, and it’s practically everywhere—except in Apple TV streaming boxes, that is. 

In its report, Ars Technica notes that Apple doesn’t put ACR in its Apple TV and Apple TV 4K devices, a major plus for privacy-minded cord-cutters.  

Ars also praises Apple for being up-front about its Apple TV privacy policies, as well as for giving you the opportunity at setup to choose whether you want your location tracked or if you’ll allow analytics data to be sent back to Apple. 

Now, that’s not to say Apple gets perfect marks for the Apple TV’s privacy policies. If you sign into your Apple TV using your Apple account, for example, you’ll be sacrificing some privacy, including “data about your activity on and use of” Apple products, Ars Technica notes. While it’s technically possible to use an Apple TV without signing in to your main Apple account, most of us go ahead and do so for convenience’s sake. 

This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best media streaming devices.

And while Apple hasn’t yet deployed ACR on its Apple TV boxes, it certainly could in the future, particularly if it chooses to get into the ad-supported streaming business. 

But for now, at least, the Apple TV is still missing ACR. Thank goodness.