Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal info in front of their Smart TVs.
Do you have one of those fancy Samsung Smart TVs that you can activate with your voice? If so, then you better be careful of what you say in front of the telly, as it will pass on what you say to an unnamed third party.
According to BBC News, the warning applies to those who use the voice activation feature on their Samsung Smart TV.
The official Samsung Smart TV privacy statement 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.”
The news certainly hasn’t been going down well on social media with many, including EFF activist Parker Higgins, comparing it to George Orwell’s 1984:
Left: Samsung SmartTV privacy policy, warning users not to discuss personal info in front of their TV Right: 1984 pic.twitter.com/osywjYKV3W
— Parker Higgins (@xor) February 8, 2015
Samsung have since released a statement that reads:
“If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice command search. At that time, the voice data is sent to a server, which searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV.”
In fairness to Samsung, they did say that it does not retain voice data or sell the audio being captured and that users will know when voice activation is in use by the microphone symbol that appears on screen.
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