45% of Americans Have Never Touched Their Smart Device Privacy Settings — Fix It in 3 Steps

You research the latest smart TV, voice assistant, doorbell, camera, or even a new AI app, finally decide on one, wait for it to ship, and start setting it up. You can't wait to get it going, so you skip past the tutorials, and you're all ready to go.

But there's one part you may have missed, or that was likely buried in menus and unclear about what you had control of.

Your privacy settings.

According to the recent Reviews.org 2026 State of Consumer Data report, 45% have never adjusted their privacy settings on a smart home device.

You can take simple steps to ensure your data and privacy settings are updated, giving you a clearer idea of what your device is actually doing with your data. Let’s go over how you can get started.

57% of survey respondents have never read the full privacy policy before using a connected device. It’s understandable: policies are long, legalistic, and appear as a roadblock during setup when you just want to start using your device.

If you're not going to pore over every legal detail, it's still worth checking the privacy dashboard or privacy center of every device you purchase. Look for deletion, auto-delete, and data-sharing controls.

Before your next device purchase, search “[brand name] privacy” and look for a plain-language summary or dedicated privacy page.

Trust rankings are a practical shortcut when evaluating a new device, and brand reputation on privacy is increasingly influencing real purchase decisions. Reviews.org asked survey respondents to share how they felt about top brands, and found that all brands failed to provide a perfect trust score. Of the brands evaluated, Roku came out as number one.

Smart TVs track what you’re watching with Automatic Content Recognition (ACR). This technology monitors what you watch via constant screenshots, eventually generating a profile of your viewing habits over time. This profile can then be sold to advertisers.

If you’re not a fan of your data being sold, you can look through your privacy settings and turn off ACR. While you’re at it, check that those privacy settings carry over to your other devices such as video game consoles, tablets, and other media players, too.

Here are some helpful examples of where to find privacy settings on your smart TV:

Note that some of these paths may not match your exact model year, firmware, or software version. Privacy settings can also be reset after firmware updates.

Privacy settings aren't just for physical devices. Voice assistants and AI tools may store voice commands, typed prompts, assistant requests, and related account activity.

According to our survey, even though 65% of respondents expressed privacy concerns about Amazon Alexa, Google Gemini, and ChatGPT, 50% have never deleted or limited AI assistant conversation history. This suggests that the gap between concern and action is wider than you’d expect.

If you want to limit what your AI assistant stores, you have to go find the settings yourself, because they’re turned on by default. Here are a few helpful examples for popular AI assistants:

One thing you should know is that deleting history controls what is stored, not what is processed. That means your data still travels to the AI assistant’s servers in real time.

That doesn’t mean the effort isn’t worth it. It just means that taking control of your data and how it’s used requires occasional checking-in over time, just like how you might change your password a few times a year.

It also means it’s worth evaluating what brands you buy from in the first place. A quick Google search on a company’s history with data breaches and privacy reputations can help you figure out which companies are worth buying from and which companies you ought to avoid.