You might have noticed that the Netflix app has been acting really strangely lately. Randomly turning on and changing. Is Netflix spying on you?
Netflix has been acting up lately, in a way that has me concerned that the app might be doing some data-mining. The app has been playing up for quite some time, I just never really thought much of it until recently. What exactly was happening with the Netflix app?
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I first noticed something was off when the Netflix app would randomly switch on, and sometimes even log into my profile, without me doing anything. I Googled this to find out what exactly was going on and a bunch of other people had a similar problem. One guy explained it was a Chromecast issue; something about the app launching randomly when the device is purging cache. Didn’t make a lot of sense, but I am not expert so I just let it be.
Then it happened again, but this time I was playing an online game with my friend on my Xbox One. The Netflix app randomly launched, kicking me out off the game. I got a bit spooked by this but, before jumping to conclusions, I did a bit of digging and found that it simply could have been one of my family members trying to cast Netflix to my device though their phone. I mean, it has happened before, accidentally picking the wrong device to cast to, so it made sense and I thought nothing of it.
Netflix randomly switches on
Skip ahead a few weeks and I am about to watch the next episode of The Detour on Stan. I have one of those Hisense smart TVs that has Netflix and Stan pre-installed. Anyway, the second I hit the play button it switches straight to Netflix’s log-in screen, but strangely the audio still seemed to be playing from Stan. I go back to Stan and try again, two more times, and the same thing happened again. I turned my TV off for a good 30 seconds and tried again, and this time successfully.
What on Earth could have caused Netflix to randomly fire up? I was the only one at home so nobody else was trying to watch Netflix. My WiFi is secured so nobody could have randomly tried to cast to my TV, and my account showed that nobody else had tried to log in to my account when this happened. Was my TV just glitching out, or is there something sinister at play here? Is Netflix spying on you?
Netflix accused of spying on people before
It wouldn’t be too crazy to assume that Netflix might indeed by spying on us. In 2017 Netflix U.S. sent out a creepy Tweet which scared a lot of users.
To the 53 people who’ve watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?
— Netflix US (@netflix) December 11, 2017
Is Netflix spying on me?
This problem seems to be exclusive to Netflix. I use Stan, Foxtel Now, Prime Video and Netflix and no other app does this. Each one of these apps has same casting capabilities too (aside from maybe Prime Video, don’t know if they have implemented it yet). This has affected my TV, Chromecast, Xbox and PlayStation. I’m starting to think that the app randomly turns on when it is sending information back to Netflix. I may be wrong, but I have reached out to Netflix for a comment just in case.
Has this ever happened to you or am I alone in the dark on this one? Let me know in the comments below!