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Samsung Smart TVs Record Personal Conversations for Voice Command Feature

Samsung Smart TVs Record Personal Conversations for Voice Command Feature

By Ketan Pratap | Updated: 9 February 2015 18:30 IST

Smart televisions (TVs) have been around for some time and have lately been gaining a lot of traction with various technological advancements. The smart TV can now even be operated by just voice commands, thanks to the voice recognition technology integrated into the device.

However, you might want to reconsider need to use the voice recognition technology in televisions as a recent report citing a major OEM's privacy policy has suggested that your television in the living room might be recording your personal conversations alongside the voice commands given to the device.

First spotted by the Daily Beast, the privacy policy of Samsung's Smart TV notes, "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."

(Also see: The Internet of Insecure Things)

It further adds, "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 paragraph in question from Samsung's Privacy policy certainly raises eyebrows about privacy concerns. The policy points to the company sharing user information with third parties.

In no time, the South Korean giant has defended itself and in a statement to The Daily Beast notes, "Samsung takes consumer privacy very seriously. In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers' personal information and prevent unauthorised collection or use."

Further, Samsung in a statement to TechCrunch has given out additional details and has also revealed how the technology works on smart TVs. It writes, "Voice recognition, which allows the user to control the TV using voice commands, is a Samsung Smart TV feature, which can be activated or deactivated by the user. The TV owner can also disconnect the TV from the Wi-Fi network. Should consumers enable the voice recognition capability, the voice data consists of TV commands, or search sentences, only."

Denying reports about selling the recorded voice to third parties, the company adds, "Samsung does not retain voice data or sell it to third parties. If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice command search. 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."

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Further reading: Home Entertainment, Samsung, Samsung Smart TV, Smart TVs, Smart Televisions

Ketan Pratap

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Ketan Pratap is the editor at Gadgets 360 - with over 12 years of experience covering the technology domain. With a breadth and depth of knowledge in the field, he's done extensive work across news, features, reviews, and opinion pieces. But what's truly inspiring about Ketan is how he spends his free time. He's often found gazing at snow-capped mountains from over 20,000 feet while sitting on the hood of his car, taking in the breathtaking beauty of nature. His passion for the great ...More