14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has found itself at the center of a user privacy scandal this past weekend after Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activist Parker Higgins has pointed out that the company's privacy policy for its SmartTV line of products looks very much like George Orwell's famous 1984 dystopian novel.
The controversy revolved around a paragraph where the company was informing users not to speak personal information near their TV and its remote if the voice recognition feature is enabled.
The problem with this is that any incoming audio that the TV categorized as "spoken words" would be automatically recorded and uploaded to a third-party for further analysis and processing.
The paragraph in question said, "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."
Many people were quick to ask "who's the third party?" and "why should they whisper around their TV?"
Samsung updates policy, it's now more straightforward, but still creepy
After intense criticism online from bloggers, activists, and national media, the company issued a statement, clarifying that the data is currently handled by Nuance Communications, Inc., and also moved to update its current policy, expanding it to be clearer and more straightforward.
"To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some interactive voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service provider (currently, Nuance Communications, Inc.) that converts your interactive voice commands to text and to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you."
Additionally, the company has clarified that the TV is not always listening to users, something that was highly exaggerated.
"Samsung will collect your interactive voice commands only when you make a specific search request to the Smart TV by clicking the activation button either on the remote control or on your screen and speaking into the microphone on the remote control."
In November 2015, Vizio found itself at the center of a similar controversy when the press discovered that the company was collecting users' TV viewing habits through their smart TVs, and selling the data to online advertisers.
