Would you sign up to get your hands on a 55-inch TV for free?
Startup Telly is counting on it: It plans to give away its dual-screen Smart TVs this summer – to those who want to see ads on the extra screen below the main monitor And share a significant portion of their personal data, CNN affairs reported.
Related: 4 essentials to comply with the new data privacy regulations
Launching in 2021, Telly will be able to offer the TVs for free – 500,000 to start with – because the cost is subsidized by those ads. The company says other TV manufacturers are already monetizing consumer advertising and data, and the model allows people to “share that value proposition.”
Telly not only collects that viewing data, but also a wide range of data at the individual household level: contact details, cultural or social identifiers such as favorite sports teams, IP address, gender, political views and sexual orientation.
In response to CNN’s report, the company said the issue of sexual orientation has been removed from its privacy policy and no customer has been asked about it.
But the revision and other erroneous annotations in Telly’s privacy policy raise some serious red flags, per TechCrunch. A portion of a journalist’s screenshot before edits were made reveals the questionable accuracy of the policy and the company’s desire “for another way around it.” [it].”
today in the privacy policy pic.twitter.com/83QI7l7iFu
— Shoshana Wodinsky (she/her) ? (@swodinsky) May 16, 2023
Telly’s chief strategy officer, Dallas Lawrence, told TechCrunch via email that the policy was an old draft that had been uploaded in error.
Related: Does customer data privacy really matter? It should be. | ukbusinessupdates.com
Ilya Pozin, founder and CEO of Telly, also co-founded Pluto TV, a free ad-supported streaming service acquired by Viacom in 2019 for $340 million.
