Samsung TV Eavesdropping - The revelation that Samsung's Smart TV can listen in to conversations and send the information to an unidentified third party has left a lot of consumers unsettled.
In it's privacy policy, the South Korean electronic giant has outlined a few things about the capabilities of the voice recognition software that features on it's Smart TVs.
The software has the ability to "capture voice commands and associated texts so that [Samsung] can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features."
However, the exact price that customers have to pay in order to enjoy this trending feature is clearly stated in the policy.
"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."
Although the company insists that the voice recognition feature can be easily disabled, it adds that information collected from customers will used to evaluate and improve the products performance.
"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."
The news of the Samsung TV eavesdropping ability has since gone viral, spurring debates on social media about privacy and technology.
However, a spokesperson from the company sought to quench the debate in a statement quoted by CNBC- Samsung 'takes consumers privacy very seriously.'
And 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."
