Is your Samsung TV spying on your conversations?

Samsung found themselves in somewhat of a privacy public relations crisis this week after its ominously worded privacy policy regarding its Smart TV sets came to the forefront of attention.

And rightly so. In fact a part of the privacy policy was so creepily worded it would even make Facebook look like the patron saint of privacy.

From the [now] out-dated policy (emphasis added by us)…

In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. 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.”

Pretty scary stuff, when you consider what it pretty much says is that if you reveal personal information in the vicinity of your Samsung Smart TV, then too bad, that information is getting sent to ‘third parties’ without really saying what could potentially happen to that information.

Well in the wake of the inevitable social media ruckus, Samsung have stepped in to clarify that the privacy policy doesn’t really communicate what happens particularly well, and it’s not all as bad as it seems.

So, to clarify a few points…

Samsung Smart TVs are programmed to recognise specific commands if voice controls are enabled, such as commands to decrease the volume or change the channel. So yes, if the feature is enabled, the TV has to constantly “listen” so it knows when you voice any of these specific commands.

However in this case, any information deemed NOT to be a command is neither stored nor transmitted anywhere. Basically, according to Samsung, it gets immediately forgotten.

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However a select few Samsung models also have another feature that requires more advanced voice recognition for a more “smart” feel – with this feature you can search for a specific film or for a specific actor by speaking into the remote. It is this feature that the daunting part of the privacy policy refers to, because your voice in this case IS transmitted to a third party…

…the third party, however, is a company that translates your voice into text so the Smart TV can act upon it. But importantly, to use this feature you have to initiate it by voicing a command or pressing the relevant button on the remote, much like you initiate Siri/Cortana on your smartphone. So this means that this “extra smart” feature isn’t constantly listening to you or spying on you at all. You initiate it, speak, and your voice gets sent to the company for translation, returned to the TV which acts on the command, and then the listening feature turns off.

So it isn’t really as bad as the policy makes out, it would seem.

Samsung have since reworded the privacy policy to make it appear less unnerving (and Orwellian.) They have also stressed that information that is transmitted to the translation company is encrypted…

In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers’ personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or use.

You can also deactivate the voice recognition feature completely, or even go as far as disconnecting the TV from your Wi-Fi network (though of course most of the “smart” features won’t work if you do that)

So, in this case, unless your activating the smart voice command feature and then immediately shouting out your credit card information into the remote control, which then somehow manages to get intercepted by a cyber-criminal capable of both intercepting and decrypting that information, you really don’t have too much to worry about.

But it’s yet another incident that raises certain concerns… with voice recognition technology becoming more commonplace in everyday devices like TVs as well as computers, smartphones and even in your car, it means we’re placing more trust in companies with a potential wealth of our personal information.

In the case of these voice recognition devices, do you trust the companies to handle your information responsibly, especially considering they could theoretically record & transmit anything you say? In a world where we’re relying on the trust of companies privacy policies to an ever greater extent, you have to ask yourself, how much information about yourself are you willing to potentially put at risk for the sake of convenience?

Have your say below.

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