Chinese television Maker Skyworth has issued an apology after a consumer found that his set was quietly collecting a wide range of private data and sending it to a Beijing-based analytics company without his consent. From a report: A Network traffic analysis revealed that a Skyworth smart TV scanned for other devices connected to the same local network every 10 minutes and gathered data that included device names, IP addresses, network latency and even the names of other Wi-Fi networks within range, according to a post last week on the Chinese developer forum V2EX. The data was sent to the Beijing-based firm Gozen Data, the forum user said. Gozen is a data analytics company that specialises in targeted advertising on smart TVs, and it calls itself Chinaâs first "home marketing company empowered by big data centred on family data." The user did not identify himself, and efforts to contact the person received no reply. However, the post quickly picked up steam, touching a nerve among Chinese consumers and prompting angry comments. "Isn't this already the criminal offence of spying on people?" asked one user on Sina.com, a Chinese financial news portal. "Whom will the collected data be sold to, and who is the end user of this data?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.