Roku is an excellent media streaming device. But it’s ridiculously cheap because their real business is selling data on what you watch to advertisers.
I haven’t found a good general Roku setting in the app for opting out of that surveillance. It’s not really in the app’s settings, other than you can turn off personalized ads. I presume they’re still selling my data.
I did find some hard-to-find web pages though.
California gives me special powers. Roku has a don’t-sell page for us hidden here. The UI is (deliberately?) confusing but I believe “Enabled” is the more private option.
Roku’s cookie settings gives you tools to opt out of not only their own cookies, but their ad partners too. The main thing it does is take you to this industry opt out tool which is a general purpose web thing. Only works with ad blocker disabled. I think this is just setting things on the specific web browser you visited it on and is not a broader account opt-out.
Roku is also embedding more and more ads in the app. There’s a secret menu to turn those off that works, at least for now. Hat tip to Andy for finding this page. The code is Home (5 times), then up right down left up.
Update: My Roku is actually a TCL television. I can’t find anything online about TCL privacy choices but when I emailed me they sent me to this web form to submit a request. An automated process got me to the point of them wanting my TV’s serial number that also says “Roku TV: This data is solely controlled by Roku TV. Please email the request to privacy@roku.com” so I guess that’s the end of that. The process was not friendly: 2 different CAPTCHAs and 3 separate verifications of email and phone number.
Nelson's log 