Samsung’s
SmartTV Is ‘Spying’ on Your Personal Conversations
Joshua Barrie,
Business InsiderFebruary
9, 2015
Samsung SmartTVs are listening in on what you’re saying.
Samsung’s new SmartTV has a cool new voice-command feature.
Unfortunately, writes the Daily Beast, this voice-command feature can also
record everything you say, including personal conversations, and transmit it
all to a third party.
The company’s voice recognition software allows viewers to
communicate with their television by talking to it. It’s enabled when a
microphone symbol appears. Basically, instead of using a traditional remote
control to change the channel, people can simply ask their Samsung TV to do it
for them by uttering a few words.
This is worrying people, largely due to a warning hidden deep inside its “privacy policy.” The Daily
Beast first spotted this sentence, which reads:
"Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal
or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data
captured and transmitted to a third party."
The Daily Beast makes the point that if peoples’ living room
conversations are being recorded and passed on, privacy is being undermined.
Homes are supposed to be places where families and friends can talk about
anything and everything.
“Don’t talk about tax evasion, drug use,” warns the Daily Beast.
It’s pointed out that sensitive information, such as “device
identifiers,” according to Samsung, could potentially be passed to law
enforcement, advertisers, and other groups. “If the transmission is not
encrypted, a SmartHacker could conceivably turn your TV into an eavesdropping
device,” the blog adds.
Before going further, it’s important to note that the function
only operates in this way when the voice recognition is turned on. That’s
probably one of the main draws to the new technology, of course — “TV has never
been this smart,” Samsung says.
Samsung has responded to the privacy concerns in a statement:
"Samsung takes consumer privacy very seriously. In all of
our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practises,
including data encryption, to secure consumers’ personal information and
prevent unauthorised collection or use,” the company said. “Voice recognition,
which allows the user to control the TV using voice commands, is a Samsung
Smart TV feature, which can be activated or deactivated by the user. The TV
owner can also disconnect the TV from the Wi-Fi network."
Similar concerns were also raised about Siri in the US. The
service also transmits information to a third-party. This blog first pointed out the voice-recognition function when it
arrived on the iPhone 4S.
On the blog, Simon Fodden says he spoke to someone at Apple who
told him “the Siri dictation feature is sent to servers that reside in the US
and that Apple, its related companies and agents have access to the contents of
what is dictated.”
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