How Smart Is Your TV?

How smart is your TV? It may be smarter than you think especially if you have a top of the range Samsung smart TV as they could be spying on you. If you have one off the Samsung smart TV’s that can be voice activated, there is a chance that it might be listening in to viewers in the privacy of their own homes whilst also collecting and sharing intimate conversations.

This was first noticed when the Daily Beast noticed one line hidden away in Samsung’s privacy policy
that warned of the potential scope of the sets’ voice recognition software. “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 the third party,” It turns out that voice command such as “change the channel to RTE1” are transmitted to a third-party service that converts the speech to text and then sends the command to the television.

Samsung have said the data is not retained or sold and is used solely to improve the technology. They also mentioned that they employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including encryption. What is not mentioned is whether the data is kept anonymous, the identity of the company receiving the data, and whether this company is adhering to those same protocols.

In the meantime if you are disturbed by this revelation then the solution that Samsung recommend is to turn of the voice recognition software in the TV’s settings menu as it’s turned on by default in the TV’s settings. Also if you have any other devices that use technology like this, then please read their manuals thoroughly to make sure that your privacy is protected as the Internet of Things will make this a more regular occurrence.