14 DAY TRIAL // Some smart television sets from Samsung come with a Voice Recognition feature that enables users to command the device through sound, but it can also capture sound irrelevant for the function and send it to a third party.
The voice command function works by identifying sound and converting it to text that can be interpreted by the Smart TV as an instruction to carry out a specific task. The entire process relies on a speech-to-text service integrated in the device and provided by a third party.
Extra chatter is received by Samsung
According to the Samsung Global Privacy Policy, the data is sent to the service along with details about the device, such as identifiers. However, the TVs are not as smart as advertised and do not censor sound that is unrelated to the feature, allowing it to also be delivered to the third party.
Samsung says that the captured voice commands and the extra information that may be associated with them is evaluated in order to improve the feature.
However, the supplemental data may not have any relevance to building a better service (passwords, talks over Skype) and there is a chance that it is personal in nature in many cases. Since a third party service is used to convert recorded sound into text, Samsung is not the only one receiving it. The company realizes this and warns about this risk:
“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.”
Privacy at risk
One of the dangers arising from this is that not only Samsung may be able to identify individuals and have access to personal conversations but a third-party can do it, too, provided that info is encrypted in transit so that other entities cannot access it in plain text.
The Voice Recognition feature can be disabled, which may look like the TV can no longer record sound in the room. However, Samsung says that even so, the device may be controlled via predefined voice commands, and associated text and other usage data can still be collected.
One way to avoid voice data to be gathered would be to disconnect the device from the wireless network, although this would defeat the purpose of a Smart TV.