Vizio, one of the world's biggest makers of Smart TVs, is paying $2.2 million to settle charges that it collected viewing habits from 11 million devices without the knowledge or consent of the people watching them.

According to a complaint filed Monday by the US Federal Trade Commission, Internet-connected TVs from Vizio contained ACR—short for automated content recognition—software. Without asking for permission, the ACR code captured second-by-second information about the video the TVs displayed. The software collected other personal information and transmitted it, along with the viewing data, to servers controlled by the manufacturer. 

Why worry about Big Brother? It's your big Samsung TV that's watching you. Oh, and listening to you. It concerns the voice-recognition feature, vital for everyone who finds pressing a few buttons on their remote far too tiresome.

The company may "capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features." This is almost understandable. It's a little like every single customer service call, supposedly recorded to make your next customer service call far, far more enjoyable. Clearly, this isn't the only option for those intent on a SmartTV. But what might be authorized and by whom?

With the continuous advancements made in technology, our online experiences are becoming more streamlined and seemingly user friendly.

We no longer require stationary desktop computers to access the Internet, but instead can reach the web through our laptops, smartphones, tablets and now, televisions. Smart TVs are one of the latest additions to the family of fun gadgets millions of people have their eyes on, but are they secure? In January 2014, there was a deeper dive into the safety of smart TVs by inspecting the televisions of major manufactures. Journalists were able to crack into the devices by messing with their SSL certificates.