You lost the dial, and nobody told you
Televisions used to have a knob and an aerial. Now they have accounts, app stores, terms screens and settings that live three menus deep. None of that arrived with an instruction card.
The manifesto
Why should I have to do this?
You bought a television. You shouldn't need a privacy degree to use it.
A TV is software now
Modern televisions are computers with a very large screen attached. Like any software, what they do depends on the version installed and the options switched on.
Advertising and data are part of the business
Smart TVs and streaming platforms can collect viewing, device, advertising and usage data depending on model, settings and services. That is disclosed in policies almost nobody reads.
The settings are scattered
Privacy options rarely sit in one obvious place. Some are under General, some under Support, some behind a terms screen you agreed to on day one.
Updates move the furniture
Settings and behaviour can change after software updates. A menu you found last year may have a new name, a new home, or a new default.
Privacy whack-a-mole is exhausting
Check the TV. Then the streaming stick. Then each app account. Then do it again after the next update. It's not that any single step is hard — it's that nobody hands you the map.
We translate the menus. You make the choices.
No lectures, no doom, no assumptions about what you should want. Just the settings worth looking at, in the order they appear on your screen.