Smart TVs spent the last several years training an entire industry on a business model: sell the hardware near cost, then make the real money selling viewing data and ad space back through the software. That model has now moved to computer monitors, and most shoppers comparing panels on refresh rate and color accuracy have no reason to expect it. LG and Samsung both build smart monitors on the same ad-serving operating systems, webOS and Tizen respectively, that power their televisions, and testing from RTINGS has already demonstrated those monitors performing the same automatic content recognition (ACR) tracking a TV does, on a device most people think of as a dumb display for a PC.
What ACR Does on a Monitor
Automatic content recognition works by continuously sampling what’s on screen and matching it against a reference database to identify what you’re watching, or on a monitor, what you’re doing, down to specific apps, games, or content, regardless of whether it’s coming from a streaming app, a game console, or a laptop plugged in over HDMI. On a television, that data gets sold to advertisers to build a viewing profile. On a monitor connected to a work laptop or a gaming PC, the same tracking has access to a very different, often more sensitive picture: spreadsheets, private messages, work documents, anything visible on screen during ordinary use. Manufacturers don’t market it under the “ACR” name. LG calls its version “Live Plus,” Samsung calls its “Viewing Information Services,” and Sony, Vizio, and TCL each use their own branded terms, a naming pattern that makes the feature harder to search for and opt out of even when you know to look.
This isn’t a hypothetical concern regulators have ignored. The Texas Attorney General sued five major TV makers, Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL, over ACR tracking practices in December 2025. Samsung settled in February 2026, agreeing to obtain express, clear consent before collecting ACR data and to rewrite its consent screens so the choice is genuinely visible rather than buried in a menu. That settlement covers Samsung’s TVs specifically. Nothing about it guarantees the same protections carried over automatically to Samsung’s monitor lineup, which runs comparable software but wasn’t named in the suit at all.
A Separate, Uglier Problem: Ads Arriving Through Windows Itself
Tracking software built into the monitor’s own operating system is one layer of this. A second, more aggressive one has shown up independently: LG monitors have been documented pushing McAfee antivirus ads directly through Windows Update, using the same device-metadata mechanism Windows relies on to install legitimate drivers automatically when new hardware is plugged in. Users on Dell and Alienware monitors reported similar unwanted software installs. None of this requires the monitor to have “smart” features you knowingly opted into. It happens through the ordinary, automatic driver-installation process most people never think to check, the moment a new monitor is connected for the first time.
Why This Didn’t Stay a TV-Only Problem
The obvious question is why manufacturers with a working ad business on TVs would bother extending it to a product category traditionally sold on pure spec comparisons. The answer is straightforward: the software platform already exists. webOS and Tizen were built once, at real engineering cost, to run a TV’s app store, ad insertion, and content-recognition pipeline. Reusing that same platform on a monitor costs the manufacturer very little extra, while opening up a second hardware category’s worth of viewing and usage data to the same advertising business already funding the TV side. From a manufacturer’s perspective, a monitor with no ad platform is a one-time hardware sale; a monitor running the same software as its TVs is a hardware sale plus an ongoing data stream, a strictly better outcome for them even if it’s a worse one for the buyer who assumed a monitor was just a dumb screen.
The Office-Surplus and Business-Line Exception
There’s one category of monitor genuinely worth knowing about here: dedicated business and professional display lines, Dell’s UltraSharp series, HP’s business-class monitors, and similar enterprise-focused lineups from most major manufacturers. These are sold into corporate IT procurement, where buyers are evaluating color accuracy, warranty terms, and mounting compatibility, not app stores or ad platforms, and where an enterprise customer discovering their new monitor fleet was quietly reporting on-screen activity to an ad network would be a genuine liability problem for the manufacturer’s B2B relationships. That commercial pressure has kept most business-line monitors free of the smart-TV-style software stack even from manufacturers, like LG and Samsung, whose consumer-facing “smart monitor” lines do run it. A secondhand or office-surplus business-line monitor, increasingly common on the resale market as companies refresh their fleets, is frequently a safer bet on this specific issue than a brand-new consumer “smart” monitor from the same company.
How to Check Before You Buy
A monitor’s marketing page won’t tell you any of this. A few concrete things to check instead:
- Read the privacy policy for the specific model, not the brand in general. LG’s own monitor privacy policy discloses that it can collect device usage data and browsing activity and share it with advertisers, the same disclosure structure used for its TVs, just applied to a product category most shoppers don’t expect it in.
- Search the exact model number plus “ACR” or “smart features” before buying, not just the brand name. Manufacturers use different branded terms across product lines, and a non-“smart” monitor from the same manufacturer’s budget line may not include the tracking software at all, even if the flagship model in the same lineup does.
- Check whether the monitor requires a network connection to function. A monitor with no built-in Wi-Fi and no app platform has nothing to phone home with in the first place. This is the most reliable filter available, more reliable than reading a privacy policy that can change after purchase.
- Disable automatic manufacturer app installation in Windows before connecting a new monitor, regardless of brand. Windows Pro users can do this through Group Policy (`gpedit.msc` → Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → System → Device Installation → enable “Prevent automatic download of applications associated with device metadata”); Windows Home users can reach an equivalent setting through System Properties → Hardware → Device Installation Settings, set to “No.” This blocks the Windows-Update-delivered adware path regardless of whether the monitor itself is a smart model.
- Look at whether the retailer listing mentions a built-in app store, voice assistant, or streaming apps at all. A monitor advertised on those terms is, functionally, a small TV wearing a monitor’s marketing copy, and everything above applies to it in full.
Lower-Profile Brands Aren’t Automatically Safer, But They’re a Real Option
Monitor lines from smaller or less mainstream manufacturers, brands that haven’t built out a smart-TV-style software platform at all, are worth considering specifically because they have no ad-supported business model to fund with your viewing data. That’s not a guarantee any specific brand is clean; it’s a structural point. A monitor maker with no app store, no ad network, and no long-term software platform to monetize has less built-in incentive to add tracking after the sale, compared to a company that already runs one across its TV lineup and can extend the same infrastructure to monitors at close to zero marginal cost. If a “smart monitor” from a major TV brand and a comparably specced non-smart panel from a display-only manufacturer are priced similarly, the extra software isn’t buying you anything if the screen is only ever paired with a PC. Every genuinely “smart” feature a TV-brand monitor offers, a built-in app platform, a voice assistant, streaming apps, duplicates something the connected computer already does natively.
The Practical Takeaway
If a monitor is only ever going to be plugged into a desktop or laptop, the smart features a TV-heritage brand builds in are solving a problem that buyer doesn’t have, while adding a data-collection surface nobody asked for. The safest default for a work or gaming monitor is the most boring one: a panel with no network stack, no app platform, and nothing to phone home with, chosen on the specs that matter for a monitor, panel type, refresh rate, and color accuracy, rather than the marketing checklist a smart-TV-adjacent brand wants shoppers comparing it on instead.
