CHARLOTTE — A lot of people are considering new TV purchases, hoping to beat tariff price increases.
But when you’re disposing of your old set, one expert tells our partners at WPXI there’s something important to remember.
If it’s a smart TV, it probably has information stored about you.
Similar to a cell phone, smart TVs have built-in internet, which lets you access apps. What you may not realize though – many of them collect information for the manufacturer, including your location and what apps you open, WPXI reports.
And if your remote has a microphone, it can also capture your voice.
“A lot of people wouldn’t think about that just by getting rid of their TV, there’s just a few pieces of information that somebody could leverage,” Zen Piotrowski, a cybersecurity expert, tells WPXI.
Piotrowski says a criminal could find your home address in your television and your email address, then track you down through social media.
“They text you and they trick you into revealing some additional information,” Piotrowski adds.
He encourages consumers to reset the TV to its original settings before throwing it out, wiping out any history it may have stored. To do that, navigate to the main menu.
“You look for system, then you look at system settings and there’s a place there to reset the TV to factory settings,” Piotrowski says.
This will delete Wi-Fi, your Google account info, and any apps you’ve installed.
Experts also say not to duplicate passwords between your smart TV and anything else.
Make sure you’re using strong, unique passwords for streaming services, Wi-Fi and any other apps connected to your television set.
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