Your Samsung Smart TV May Be Spying On You

Samsung's Smart TVs new privacy policy allows that company and its partners to listen to everything the user says. The voice command feature on Samsung's Smart TV could allow the interception of conversations and their transmission to third parties.

The new privacy policy states - "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 through your use of Voice Recognition."

Samsung makes it clear that the Voice recognition tool can be turned off through settings.  Even though that will stop the working of voice recognition feature entirely, the company will still be able to collect data on how people use the TV.

“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.”

Samsung on its website states that the data collected could be potentially passed on to law enforcement, advertisers and other groups.

Electronic Frontier Foundation Activist Parker Higgins on his twitter account pointed out similarities between George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" and Samsung's smart TVs.

 

This is not the first time a Smart TV has been intercepting and transmitting data. In 2013, LG acknowledged that its smart TV's were collecting data about viewer's habits without their permission. The company said it fixed the problem with an update.

People who are concerned and worried about being spied by their SmartTV can easily disable voice recognition in the settings menu of the TV.