Lawyers for Vizio Smart TV owners propose final deal, around $20 per person

[nir]

Years after ProPublica exposed TV maker, lawyers will make millions from lawsuit.

 

Lawyers representing Vizio TV owners have asked a federal judge in Orange County, California to sign off on a proposed class-action settlement with the company for $17 million, for an affected class of 16 million people, who must opt-in to get any money. Vizio also agrees to delete all data that it collected.

 

Notice of the lawsuit will be shown directly on the Vizio Smart TVs, three separate times, as well as through paper mailings.

 

When it’s all said and done, new court filings submitted on Thursday say each of those 16 million people will get a payout of somewhere between $13 and $31. By contrast, their lawyers will collectively earn a maximum payout of $5.6 million in fees.

 

As Ars has reported previously, the manufacturer has been under scrutiny since a 2015 revelation that it was snooping on its customers. The tracking started in February 2014 on both new TVs and previously sold devices that didn't originally ship with ACR software installed. The software periodically appended IP addresses to the collected data and also made it possible for more detailed personal information—including age, sex, income, marital status, household size, education level, home ownership, and home values—to be associated.

 

Eventually, the company agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a complaint brought by the Federal Trade Commission. However, this new settlement is related to an entirely separate lawsuit, one that was consolidated in federal court in southern California.

 

This $17 million amount is more than Vizio made by licensing the data collected, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

 

A final hearing has been scheduled for December 7, 2018.

 

Source

 

[straycat19]

The only place I have ever seen Vizio TVs is in WalMart, a place I would never buy a TV from.  Why?  WalMart has a track record of selling specially manufactured items under national brands that are made with less quality.  It was first discovered back in the 90s with Remington Model 870 Wingmaster shotguns.  The parts for a normal retail model would not fit in a shotgun bought at WalMart, and vice versa.  There have been other instances, especially in electronics, over the years,  which is why they can sell so cheap.  Gateway computers was doing the same thing in the 90s with their Telepath modems that were installed in their systems and never worked reliably.  They were actually made by US Robotics for Gateway but US Robotics made sure there was no identifying data on the device anywhere.  I found this out when the government purchased a truckload of Gateways and we had so much problem with the modems that we were replacing them with US Robotics units.  While I was working in Chicago in the late 90s I had to take a defective unit to US Robotics in Buffalo Grove for an exchange and the tech there told me that they made Gateway modems to Gateway specifications and we were smart to replace them because they were junk.