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Samsung SmartTV Customers Warned Personal Conversations May Be Recorded
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.
Generally, voice commands on phones require an activator. Such as "Siri," or "Okay, Google," or "Hey, Cortana." These are phrases that probably don't seep into the average person's life too often, so they're fairly safe to use as activators. I don't have experience with iOS or WP's apps, but Google Now requires you to "train" it to the sound and cadence of your spoken phrase, "Okay, Google." This allows the phone to detect the activator phone-side, without sending information to the mothership. It's also easy to test this, simply turn off network data (perhaps by putting the phone on Airplane Mode) and activate Google Now by saying, "Okay, Google." The screen will pop up, allow you to speak, but it won't be able to contact Google to parse your question. So it's clear that Google Now handles its activation phrase offline, and although I'm not certain, I can guess that other phones do similarly.