Apple TV Is the Way To Go for Privacy While Streaming

Good news for what I call one of the very best streaming devices you can buy. The Apple TV 4K picked up a pat on the head from a consumer protection nonprofit for being more friendly to users’ data privacy than most of the competition.

why would it be safer?

Well, there’s less incentive for a non-advertiser to allow for the collection of massive reams of information on the people using their service or product.

“Apple’s primary business model isn’t dependent on selling targeted ads, so it has somewhat less incentive to harvest and monetize incredible amounts of your data,” said RJ Cross, director of the consumer privacy program at the Public Interest Research Group, in a June 1, 2025 interview with Ars Technica‘s Scharon Harding.

“I personally trust them more with my data than other tech companies,” added Cross. Less incentive doesn’t mean none, however, and Apple itself does want to suck up information for its own purposes where it can.

If you’re serious about reducing the amount of usage data to send to Apple, head into the Apple TV 4K’s settings screens and disable location tracking and analytics data sharing. If you’re really serious about lessening your unique footprint on your Apple TV, you could disable Siri, too, although I find Siri useful enough to leave this option checked.

Unless you enabled during setup, sharing voice data with Apple should be already turned off. Give it a double check just to make sure.

The Apple TV 4K is already one of my favorite streaming boxes. If you can get over the high price, you find a blisteringly fast user interface—the fastest of any streaming device I’ve used. Add to that a less-opaque-than-usual privacy menu and a thumbs-up for the Public Interest Group, and it’s a solid choice for the privacy-minded cinephile.