The next time you step into your living room you might want to be mindful of the conversation you have in front of your television following recent reports that some of the latest TV models are now programmed to actively listen in on your conversation so as to decipher voice commands. Labelled as “Smart TV’s”, these internet-connected computers have the ability to take voice commands from across the room instead of using your remote but it has recently come to light that this feature, in particular, has privacy experts up in arms.
Samsung has come under fire for the worrisome wording of its privacy policy pertaining to how its Smart TVs collect data from built-in voice recognition software. And so, if you have one of their Internet-connected smart TVs, you can turn on a voice command feature that normally saves you the trouble of finding the remote, pushing buttons and scrolling through menus. But making that feature work requires the television to listen and record almost everything you say. According to Samsung’s privacy policy, the voice recognition software may capture voice commands and associated texts so that they can provide the user with reliable voice recognition abilities. And so the privacy policy later goes on to state that if a user’s spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted over the internet to a third party for processing.
With that in mind, people be somewhat concerned if they have enabled and are using these voice recognition features on their smart-enabled TV. Even though Samsung made additional statements to the effect that they take consumer privacy very seriously and that all recorded voices transferred over to third parties for processing are encrypted and never sold to anyone, one must keep in mind that your smart-enabled internet connected TV is really just a computer connected to the internet minus an important antivirus or spyware program – making it a prime target for hackers. And so since most smart-TV’s main operating system is normally booted up as the administrator user with privilege to do anything, then any type of compromise to the TV’s operating system gives the hacker abilities to really do anything. That could range from gathering information on your identity to making a copy of all the conversations in your house. So something to be very aware of when you enable voice recognition.
With that in mind there does not seem to be any laws that are in place to help protect the average person from these types of potential privacy vulnerabilities. It would seem that Canada’s privacy laws are inadequate for today’s digital age where at the moment, the best defence comes from an understanding of how these smart devices work. Keep in mind that Samsung smart TV’s are not the only listening devices out there. Almost all major phone models these days can be set to constantly listen and wake up from a voice command. In addition, Microsoft’s Xbox One listens and waits for your command along with watching through it’s connect camera. Even the new “Hello Barbie” doll listens to children using cloud-based voice recognition technology, to understand them and talk back. So, all the more reason for all smart device users to make sure they are aware of the potential privacy and security ramifications.
Therefore, there are steps can people take then to ensure that their smart device is secure. To start with make sure you familiarize yourself with all of those new features that your smart device provides and turn off any that make you uncomfortable. Next, ensure you have all the latest software updates installed for your smart device and finally if your smart device is connected to the internet ensure that you have a reliable router with it’s software updated as well. Finally, if you have a Samsung smart TV, it might not be a bad idea to check out their privacy policy highlighted on their website at:
http://www.samsung.com/ca/info/privacy.html
