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Respected Contributor
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Registered: ‎04-16-2013

Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

Read the whole article. It is not what the Headline or the OP is saying if you read all the way thru.

Respected Contributor
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Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

Revealing information to a third party they said.

Respected Contributor
Posts: 3,597
Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

Respected Contributor
Posts: 3,597
Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

Respected Contributor
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Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

On 2/9/2015 esmeraldagooch said:

Thank you esmereldagooch. I was just going to post this same clip from the snopes article linked above.

Respected Contributor
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Registered: ‎03-10-2010

Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

This quite interesting. Some were not concerned by smart meters. How can they hurt me. Well, you go on vacation and set the thermostat down while you're gone. Your information is sold to others who can sell to you or perhaps be hacked into to let others rob you, or gain entrance to your home if you have smart TV to see or listen in your home.....

You have a tv in the bedroom ladies? What else do you do there?

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Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

In response to the February 2015 concerns about Samsung's smart TV privacy policy, the company issued a statement clarifying their data collection and storage practices. Contrary to web rumors, Samsung denied ever selling information to third parties, and explained that the language pertained only to the use of voice response functions on Internet-capable televisions:

In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers' personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or use.

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. Users can easily recognize if the voice recognition feature is activated because a microphone icon appears on the screen.

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.

Ultimately, devices such as smart TVs and smartphones are capable of recording voice data (even without the end user's knowledge or consent). However, the language highlighted in the manual (quoted above) that caused concern among consumers pertained solely to the capture of conversations recorded while voice recognition features were engaged via user initiation. Samsung has issued a SmartTV Supplement that expands on their original user's manual:

You can control your SmartTV, and use many of its features, with voice commands.

If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, 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. 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.

If you do not enable Voice Recognition, you will not be able to use interactive voice recognition features, although you may be able to control your TV using certain predefined voice commands. While Samsung will not collect your spoken word, Samsung may still collect associated texts and other usage data so that we can evaluate the performance of the feature and improve it.

You may disable Voice Recognition data collection at any time by visiting the “settings” menu. However, this may prevent you from using all of the Voice Recognition features.

Last updated: 9 February 2015

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/info/news/smarttv.asp#LzQAADEgzZwpL0Bq.99



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Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

On 2/9/2015 Lucibee said: I read that somewhere. Scary, but for what purpose?

Mostly for advertising-that's what we're told. Some tv sets can "watch" you asnd your family as you are watching the tv. I think Congress was trying to get a law passed about informing consumers that their tvs could be watching them.

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Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

An Internet connected TV that eavesdrops on the stuff you say when you’re sitting on the sofa is just the latest overreaching privacy intrusion to come to light in the tech sphere.

It’s unlikely to be the worst, and sure won’t be the last. But as more of these egregious, overreaching policies come to light — and as more of the objects with which we are surrounded in our homes, cars and lives are networked up and brought online, and thus given (at very least) the technical ability to snoop on us — there is a growing imperative to clean up the darker corners of the digital commerce sphere. To set some boundaries on what is and is not acceptable. Or risk growing consumer mistrust.

When all the objects in your home have networked ears that are fine-tuned for commercial intelligence gathering, where will you go to talk about “personal” or “sensitive” stuff?

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Registered: ‎01-28-2012

Re: Samsung Smart TVs Listens to and Reports Your Personal Conversations

Sorry, when the story was on the local news this morning, nothing was mentioned about the ability to turn this feature off.