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Samsung Warns Customers To Think Twice About What They Say Near Smart TVs (theantimedia.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the big-brother dept.

In a troubling new development in the domestic consumer surveillance debate, an investigation into Samsung Smart TVs has revealed that user voice commands are recorded, stored, and transmitted to a third party. The company even warns customers not to discuss personal or sensitive information within earshot of the device.

The new Samsung controversy stems from the discovery of a single haunting statement in the company's "privacy policy," which 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."

9 of 402 comments (clear)

  1. Anti-features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The company even warns customers not to discuss personal or sensitive information within earshot of the device.

    Then it's an anti-feature and the device is working against my interest. The device is consequently not worth my time or money and is not something I want in my home.

  2. This is not difficult folks.. by wbr1 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The only reasons to constantly record and send are nefarious. Period.

    It is not hard to achieve the same functionality through a button press. Or like Google does, a locally recognized series of words. Google Now has you train your device as to how you say Okay Google, so that ostensibly it does not send data until you do this and INSTRUCT THE DEVICE THAT IT IS SAFE SHARE AUDIO.

    The only reasons for this are greed, stupidity, and gvmnt back doors. It's like anal sex. Once you are desensitized, the door opens for more intrusion.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  3. Dumb TV by Bert64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it possible to still buy a dumb tv?
    I want one that's basically just a monitor, i have an external audio receiver and various STBs, consoles etc... The TV just acts as a dumb display device with switchable inputs. It doesn't even need a built in receiver, just the HDMI and AV inputs.

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  4. how about a by Revek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Physical switch on the mic you can turn off or on. Perhaps with a nice indicator light.

    1. Re:how about a by Burz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Physical switch on the mic you can turn off or on. Perhaps with a nice indicator light.

      These are showing up on at least one laptop brand: https://puri.sm/librem-15/

      Would be interesting to see if any old laptops from 15-20 years ago had such switches.

      As for 'airplane mode' radio cutoff switches, those are going away in favor of purely software controlled transceivers. On Thinkpads, I think the 2012 models were the last to have the switches.

  5. Re:who'd have thunk? by synaptik · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In capitalist United States, TV watches you!

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    HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
    NO CARRIER
  6. Re:who'd have thunk? by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A router running at normal speed down and limited to about 256 bps up would go a long way toward taming it.

    Except that in our brave new world, "smart" devices don't necessarily need you to give them an Internet connection before they can phone home. Some already have built-in wireless and arrangements with mobile data networks. Given sufficient market penetration, mesh-style networking also becomes a possibility. Unless we're all planning on living inside Faraday cages, we need more powerful solutions to this creeping invasion of privacy than merely controlling our standalone Internet connection(s).

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  7. physical switches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not going away soon. Any laptop purchased by the US military is required to have a physical switch to turn of any wireless capability. Oh and most vendors also sell a version of their laptops without cameras due to military sales. You have a hard time finding these models at the local store or on the Internet but if you call Dell or CDW-G you can get the same models that I order.

  8. Re:who'd have thunk? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's the key. It's easy to record an audio clip, and figure out which of a dozen keywords it comes closest to matching.

    Something the ipaq did 12 years ago.

    It's much, much harder to record an audio clip and try to find a match in a library of 20,000 words.

    If only we had proessessors several orders of magnitude more powerful than a 2003 ipaq. With thousands of time more RAM, and multiple cores...

    oh wait.

    But for the time being, transmitting the audio to a beefy server is the best we've got.

    Just how beefy are these servers? I don't need it to service millions or thousands or even 10s of users at once. Just me. I bet my desktop has enough beef to match it. And I bet that my smartphone, several orders of magnitude stronger than an 2003 ipaq, could be a pretty remarkable personal assistant just with its local resources.