Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Samsung SmartTV Customers Warned Personal Conversations May Be Recorded

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-in-front-of-the-television dept.

An anonymous reader writes Samsung's privacy policy includes details that its Smart TV voice recognition feature may pick up on personal conversations and transmit private communications to third parties. Buried in the privacy policy related to the smart television, Samsung advises users to be aware that any snippets of conversation might be captured by the software which allows them to control their television sets with a series of commands. Questions have been raised about who these third parties could be, what the information is used for, and how the data is being transmitted – with potentially unencrypted voice clips left exposed to hackers.

14 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. But surely... by fruviad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...we can trust them not to abuse this. Right?

    1. Re:But surely... by thieh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would like them to explain why a recording function is needed in the first place. If it is about determining what the best content for you might be, wouldn't you be the best person to choose what you want to watch? Why then take your choices away from you? Or are we evolved to the point that choices have become obnoxious?

    2. Re:But surely... by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      not sure. that's why if i had a smartTV i'd dangle my man-bits and hairy behind in front its camera every time i walked past it. "you wanna watch? here you go, mr nsa. claw your eyes out."

      seriously, i want my TV to be as dumb as possible and fed content by an easily upgradeable computer.

    3. Re:But surely... by TWX · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It probably works like Siri or Cortana or any of a number of voice-process things, where they send the voice command data back to a more powerful computer to process what it actually meant.

      And if that's how it works as I expect, that's why I don't use it for anything that I'm not already sending over the Internet. As in, I'll use it for entering addresses in Google Maps because I'm already sending the address to Google anyway, but I'm not inclined to dictate text messages because the voice processor people have no business with that information.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    4. Re:But surely... by turp182 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I believe it's considerably different from Siri or OK Google in that the TV is probably always listening (I'm assuming even when turned "off" so it can listen for the command to power up).

      --
      BlameBillCosby.com
    5. Re:But surely... by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When I got my newest phone, I tried out the voice recognition feature. I set it up and gave it a custom activation phrase that I figured wouldn't come up in normal conversation. What I didn't count on, though, was my phone apparently mishearing half of what I said. Several times a day, I'd hear the beeping noise it made when it recognized me ordering it to do something - but I hadn't said my activation phrase at all. My kids had a good laugh at the weird things that it mistook for an activation phrase. They'll still shout "she has a record" at my phone even though I've long turned off the voice recognition.

      Even if you don't get into the "recording everything around you and sending it to the parent company" issues, why not just use a button to begin voice commands? I can voice-search Google by pressing a microphone icon, I don't need my phone listening to me all the time just in case I utter something at the phone. Have smartphones made data-access so easy and have we gotten so lazy that "click this icon and get the weather" is too hard and we need to say "Phone, give me the weather"?!!!

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    6. Re:But surely... by CaptainLard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I know right?? Star Trek proves that even after 400 (?) years of voice command optimization, the best activation method is still to physically press the communicator emblem thingy. If Picard isn't too busy for a quick gesture to get beamed out of a warp core explosion, you can push a button when you want to know where the closest chicken nuggets are.

    7. Re:But surely... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have a Sony TV in my living room with a built-in camera so it can detect inactivity and turn off if there is nobody in the room, tune the sound to seat position, etc. - I disabled it in the setup but also put a piece of black electrical tape over it to block it so it can't see anything even if it was to be hacked and co-opted.

      Likewise, any TV that I buy that has a microphone for this kind of crap will get opened up and the wires disconnected from it to hardware disable it.

      I won't have that kind of crap in my house.

  2. Bye Bye Samsung Smart TVs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Looks like the end of Smart TVs right here.

    Only an idiot would want this in their home.

    Oh wait...

    1. Re:Bye Bye Samsung Smart TVs by Jason+Levine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not to mention that Smart TVs have a bad record of having their interfaces/applications updated. If your Smart TV's interface is aging, you need to buy a new SmartTV. If the interface on your Roku (connected to your "dumb TV") is aging, you can buy a new Roku for much less. If another company overtakes Roku and makes something much superior, you can ditch your Roku and buy one of those. Smart TVs are today's equivalent of those TVs that had VCRs and/or DVD players built in instead of hooking up a separate VCR and/or DVD player.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  3. That's how today's voice recognition WORKS. by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Competent natural-language voice recognition is still too hard for a handheld or embedded device. So, these devices digitize your voice (OMG recording!), ship it off to a server farm for interpretation, and receive the results. Because voice recognition is still a challenge, it's usually farmed out to one of a few firms (Nuance comes to mind) that do this as a third-party service. These firms can "retain" that information in the sense that it trains their voice-recognition algorithms, but they probably aren't building a huge dossier of your private conversations.

    I'd certainly like to know if Samsung retains the voice information it collects. I'd even more urgently like to know if they sell it to other "third parties" besides whoever's doing the voice recognition. The initial panic I'm seeing around this looks ill-informed, but Samsung definitely has to get out in front of it. If they can't -- if they can't provide a simple, clear explanation of what they are and aren't doing -- it's going to cost them.

  4. Re:What's wrong with this? by war4peace · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh, I'm not worried about the government finding something out. I'm worried about a criminal organization finding ways to hurt me and/or my family, be it directly or indirectly.
    Sure, one might argue the line between criminal organizations and governments has become very blurry nowadays and to that I say... I say... damn, I got nothin'.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  5. Everybody is doing this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why is this so different from what Google Chrome, Google android, Apple Siri, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Cortana are already doing for a while.

    I hate it as much as anyone but most people are already recorded 24/7

  6. What about the second party? by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The particular beef in this instance seems to be the "third party" bit, since while Apple and Google do exactly the same thing they process the audio themselves, instead of farming it out to a third party.

    You're assuming that most people realise the data is transmitted to any external party at all.

    I suspect if you did a random survey of people who had bought Smart TVs, knowing that they had voice and/or image recognition included, you would find a significant fraction of those people assumed it was done by the TV itself and had no idea that anyone else was going to see or hear anything.

    --
    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.