Don’t Discuss Personal Information In Front Of Smart TVs

Samsung has confirmed that its “smart TV” sets are listening to customers’ every word. The company warn customers not to discuss about personal information in front of TVs.

“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 company added that it does not retain or sell the voice data, but it didn’t name the third party that translates users’ speech.

The customers are given the option to activate or deactivate the voice-recognition feature at any time. The policy now names the third party that currently has access to voice commands when the voice-recognition feature is activated.

Previously, the policy read:

“If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you.”

Samsung issued an update :

“If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some interactive voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service provider (currently, Nuance Communications, Inc.)that converts your interactive voice commands to text and to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you.”

The company revealed that the TV sets can share the information with Samsung as well as third-party services. The voice activation feature on its smart TVs will capture all nearby conversations.

Samsung clarifying how the voice activation feature works. “If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice command search,” Samsung said in a statement. “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.”

By Kassandra Stone