Watch what you say in your living room. Samsung’s smart TV could be listening. And sharing.<\/p>\n
Voice recognition technology in the South Korean company’s Internet connected TVs captures and transmits nearby conversations.<\/p>\n
The potential for TVs to eavesdrop is revealed in Samsung’s smart TV privacy policy available on its website.<\/p>\n
“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 policy said.<\/p>\n
For the voice command feature to work, the TV listens for speech which is translated by third-party software into text and sent back to the TV as a command. Samsung declined to name the software company. The TV also transmits other information including its unique identifier.<\/p>\n
Samsung said data collection is aimed at improving TV performance but users can disable it.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the company said it takes consumer privacy “very seriously.”<\/p>\n
“We employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers’ personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or use.”<\/p>\n
It is not the first time that smart TVs sparked privacy concerns. In 2013, the owner of a LG Electronics smart TV revealed it was sending information about his viewing habits back to the company without consent and without encrypting data.<\/p>\n
LG has also experimented with displaying targeted ads on its smart TVs, which requires collecting and utilizing user data, such as their location, age and gender.<\/p>\n
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