Samsung Smart TV Privacy Policy Reveals Its Eavesdropping Nature

While installing a smartphone app, privacy enthusiasts take note of the fact that they are allowing the application to eavesdrop on them at any time. Many apps ask permissions for location, reading your contacts and even switching on your microphone and camera. While many people have gotten used to the fact that their smartphone can transmit information about them anytime, someone has dug deep into the privacy policies of Samsung Smart TVs and found out that they too are capable of listening your conversations. American news reporting and opinion website, Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically found out that Samsung relays voice commands to a third party service for voice recognition and users should be aware that if their spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party. The screenshot below shows the complete text from #-Link-Snipped-#.


While this isn’t particularly surprising because every voice recognition service requires to store and process spoken words, the incident managed to snowball thanks to #-Link-Snipped-# from an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activist. In his tweet EFF activist, Parker Higgins pointed out the how Samsung warning users not to discuss sensitive information in front of their TV is very similar to the ‘telescreen’ that featured in the modern dystopian classic, 1984. The book which was written by George Orwell in 1948 described the existence of a television that was able to pick up voices that were being spoken in the living room and there was no way to know whether the system was active and who was listening on the other end. The picture from the tweet has also been attached below.


As soon as the news went public, Samsung was quick to state that they employ measures such as data encryption to safeguard consumer privacy. It also restated that fact that consumers have the option of disabling the voice recognition feature and they can also disconnect the TV from internet. While the latter option seems to defeat the purpose of smart televisions, the development has kick-started the pertinent discussion on privacy, are we allowing our gadgets much more access to our personal life? We would like to ask our readers to post their opinions on this issue. Head over to the comment section now.