How to tell if your smart TV has a camera (and what to do if it does)

Imagine this: you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night watching a movie on your brand new smart TV. Have you ever even considered that the TV might be watching you right back? Well, welcome to the newest age of technology.

Unfortunately, it’s actually a phenomenon that’s been happening for years now. There are TVs that have cameras in them to utilize features like facial recognition, which enables them to recognize the person watching it and tune into their most used apps or channels. While in theory it could sound like a great nuanced idea, it also poses a security risk that could turn your TV into a monitoring device of you and your activities. Not to mention, it can also pose a threat to your Wi-Fi system, as many smart TVs are hooked up to your router.

That said, not all TVs house built-in cameras — but there are plenty that do. You want to detect them from the get-go to protect yourself and your home, so here’s how to find out if yours has one and what to do about it.

How to find the camera on your smart TV

Start at the top and search for a small lens

The easiest (and fastest) way to find out if your TV has a camera is to read the owner’s manual. For many companies, like Samsung, you can go onto the company website and search for the model number of your TV and be able to download a PDF of the owner’s manual. While this isn’t always possible, such as when you buy a TV from a secondary marketplace, it’s a good place to start if you bought it from a store.

Then, turn your attention to the top of your TV and look for a small lens. More specifically, you’re looking for a camera inside a bezel in the screen. If you see one, it’s a built-in camera indicator.

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Your TV remote’s microphone might actually be the bigger security risk

Voice activation is synonymous with smart technology

Most smart TVs offer you a remote that works with voice activation software. While it’s one of the more recent cornerstones of smart technology, this also means that the remote and the TV have microphones in them, obviously. You can often see the microphone on your TV as it is a pinhole-sized slot next to the camera. That’s generally where they sit if your TV has a camera.

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Microphones on the TV and in your remote mean that your technology is constantly learning from your conversations. Just as our phones do, the microphones listen to conversations to gather data to better target you for consumer electronics and other products.

Now, you have to remember that what you’re watching or what you’re searching for is more often than not recorded on your smart TV to give you advertising options, which is just how data sharing works. Plus, if your TV has a smart assistant like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, or Samsung Bixby, there is absolutely a microphone in it.

However, you can also disable the voice recognition of your remote on your TV by going into the settings on the TV and finding the privacy settings. For Samsung TVs, for example, you can go into Privacy > Accessibility > Voice Guide Settings. Toggling off Voice Guide settings will eliminate your voice remote’s ability to pick up your voice commands.

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