News Digest

The TV that listens to you while you watch it - then reports what you say

Samsung has warned people against discussing sensitive and private information in the vicinity of its new smart televisions - because it will be translated into text and stored in a central computer. The new privacy policy for the voice-activated television allows the company and its partners to listen in on everything that people say. The policy 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.”

While Samsung will not collect your spoken word, Samsung may still collect associated texts and other usage data so that we can evaluate the performance of the feature and improve it.

Samsung statement

Samsung insists that the data is encrypted to keep it safe, and points out that owners can disconnect their TV from wifi to keep their data secure. While lots of voice-recognition devices use an internet connection to better translate sounds into actions, the storing and sharing with third parties is a particular privacy concern for some Samsung users. The privacy policy was first highlighted by a Reddit user, and many of the comments compared the situation to the telescreens described in George Orwell novel 1984: ”Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up.”