Samsung Admits Its Smart TV Is Spying On You

[Dread Robert]

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Is Your Smart TV Spying On You? You just need to make sure you don't hold any private conversations in front of the internet-connected TV.

IS SMART TV GETTING TOO SMART?
Smart TVs are connected to the Internet, and they are capable of collecting and transmitting our data.


Samsung's Smart TV uses voice recognition technology to enable voice commands, but its privacy policy defined by the company says "if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be captured and transmitted to a third party."
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In other words, Samsung's Voice Recognition feature is always listening you, unless you deactivate it. So these internet-enabled smart devices can be exploited to reveal a wealth of personal.

"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." Samsung Smart TV privacy policy says.​

Samsung points out that the voice recognition feature can be turned off by the TV's owner, but even if you turn the feature off, Samsung can still collect enough of your data.

A spokesperson for the company told that Samsung "takes consumer privacy very seriously. 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"

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This is not the first time Samsung Smart TV or other Internet of Things has set off alarms among privacy experts.

• December 2012: Security researcher revealed a vulnerability in Samsung Smart TVs that allows an intruder to take control of the devices that are connected to the same network.
• November 2013: Researchers found that LG's Smart TVs are sending personal information back to the company's servers about what channels you watch and viewing habits.
• July 2013: Another vulnerability allowed hackers to remotely crash Samsung Smart TV without doing much efforts.
• January, 2014: More than 100,000 Refrigerators and other internet-enabled home appliances were hacked to perform a massive cyber attack.
• April 2014: We reported about cyber attacks and specialized malware targeting Internet of Things (IoT) such as TVs, Refrigerators, Microwave or dishwashers.

Internet-enabled devices and
voice command technology is becoming more ubiquitous, and many consumers rely on those solutions. So it is advised that companies needs to address some elements of its privacy policy more properly.

Source : http://thehackernews.com/2015/02/smart-tv-spying.html

 

[BrotherKantu]

it keeps listening and sending info to big brother even if you deactivate its listening function, it just ignores your commands.

https://securityledger.com/2012/12/security-hole-in-samsung-smart-tvs-could-allow-remote-spying/

 

[Night_Hawk]

Not in front of the telly: Warning over 'listening' TV

Samsung said personal information could be scooped up by the Smart TV

Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set.
The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.

Such TV sets "listen" to some of what is said in front of them and may share details they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.
Privacy campaigners said the technology smacked of the telescreens, in George Orwell's 1984, which spied on citizens.

Data sharing The warning came to light via a story in online news magazine the Daily Beast which published an excerpt of a section of Samsung's privacy policy for its net-connected Smart TV sets.
Jump media player



Smart TV owner Peter Kent: "It makes me think twice"

The policy explains that the TV set will be listening to people in the same room to try to spot when commands or queries are issued via the remote. It goes on to say: "If your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party."
Corynne McSherry, an intellectual property lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which campaigns on digital rights issues, told the Daily Beast that the third party was probably the company providing speech-to-text conversion for Samsung.

She added: "If I were the customer, I might like to know who that third party was, and I'd definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form."

Soon after, an activist for the EFF circulated the policy statement on Twitter comparing it to George Orwell's description of the telescreens in his novel 1984 that listen to what people say in their homes.

Privacy experts wondered if the grabbed audio was protected as it was sent for analysis

In response to the widespread sharing of its policy statement, Samsung has issued a statement to clarify how voice activation works. It emphasised that the voice recognition feature is activated using the TV's remote control.

It said the privacy policy was an attempt to be transparent with owners in order to help them make informed choices about whether to use some features on its Smart TV sets, adding that it took consumer privacy "very seriously".

Samsung said: "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."

It added that it did not retain voice data or sell the audio being captured. Smart-TV owners would always know if voice activation was turned on because a microphone icon would be visible on the screen, it said.

The third party handling the translation from speech to text is a firm called Nuance, which specialises in voice recognition, Samsung has confirmed to the BBC.
Samsung is not the first maker of a smart, net-connected TV to run into problems with the data the set collects. In late 2013, a UK IT consultant found his LG TV was gathering information about his viewing habits.

Publicity about the issue led LG to create a software update which ensured data collection was turned off for those who did not want to share information.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31296188

 

[Raaz]

it keeps listening and sending info to big brother even if you deactivate its listening function, it just ignores your commands.

https://securityledger.com/2012/12/security-hole-in-samsung-smart-tvs-could-allow-remote-spying/

What about Sony TV ???

any information ??

 

[BrotherKantu]

What about Sony TV ???

any information ??

لگتا ہے سسرال نے سونی ٹی وی دیا ہے جو فکر پڑ گئی ہے.[hilar]

 

[Raaz]

لگتا ہے سسرال نے سونی ٹی وی دیا ہے جو فکر پڑ گئی ہے.[hilar]

:lol:فکر تو سب کو ہونی چاہے ، پتہ لگے کہ ٹی وی ہی ٹوٹے بنا رہا ہے

ہمارے وقت میں یہ سمارٹ ٹی وی نہی ہوتے تھے ، وہ ڈبے والے ہوتے تھے بیس انچ کے

 

[Night_Hawk]

[h=1]Samsung investigates why its TVs put ads in others' apps[/h]

Samsung is the world's bestselling brand of smart TVs


[h=2]Related Stories
[/h]

• Warnings over smart device privacy
• Samsung warns about 'listening' TV
• LG promises fix for 'spying' TVs
  

Samsung says it is investigating why some of its smart TVs are adding adverts to television programmes and films played via third-party apps.
Owners have complained of a silent ad for Pepsi interrupting playback several times an hour.
A spokeswoman for Samsung said it was only aware of the glitch affecting customers in Australia at this time.
The fault comes days after the company faced controversy over the way its TVs made use of voice recordings.

Australian subscribers to Foxtel's app are among those affected

"We are aware of a situation that has caused some smart TV users in Australia to experience programme interruption in the form of an advertisement," the spokeswoman said.
"This seems to be caused by an error, and we are currently conducting a full and thorough investigation into the cause as our top priority.
"This situation has so far been reported only in Australia. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience experienced by our customers."
Users of at least two smart TV apps have complained about the issue:

• Plex - media centre software that allows owners to stream video files stored on a hard disk to other equipment. In most cases, the user would not expect to see any ads at all when using this
• Foxtel Play - an app installed by default on Samsung's Australian TVs, which provides access to the pay TV network's channels, which have ads of their own

News site Ars Technica noted that Samsung and Yahoo had been working together on a way to show pop-up ads on Samsung's smart TVs and suggested that the software involved might be the cause of the fault.
It said some users had been able to stop the ads appearing by rejecting a "Yahoo privacy policy" in the affected TV set's settings.

Samsung TV owners wrote about the problem on the Reddit news site
Voice recognition Samsung's PR team is also dealing with a backlash prompted by fears that its smart TV sets might be "spying" on their watchers' conversations.
Concern was raised by a privacy policy that stated: "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."
Several commentators compared the policy to the surveillance state depicted in George Orwell's novel 1984.

Samsung says its remote controls send voice data to Nuance
Samsung has since clarified the situation, saying there are two microphones involved:

• One built into the TV set, which responds to pre-set commands, such as, "Turn the volume up," but does not store or transmit the user's words while doing so
• Another embedded in its remote control, which does send speech to a third-party service - currently the voice recognition specialist Nuance - to let the TV respond to complex commands, including requests for movie recommendations. In addition, it said, the commands could be collected and studied by Samsung itself

The South Korean company said it had now altered its privacy document to read: "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.
"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."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31424596