Samsung SmartTV models transmit voice, and more, to a third-party service

Samsung SmartTV transmits data to a third party, be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information.

We have discussed several times about the privacy and security issues related to the Internet of Things devices, Smart meters and Smart TV are intelligent devices that could be exploited by hackers to collect our sensitive information.

Today we will speak about SmartTv, in particular of the last models produced by giant Samsung, this new generation of the device is able to watch and listen us to receive commands.

The downside is that our images and audio could be transferred to third parties, but unfortunately the majority of end-users ignore it because every time makes a purchase never reads the booklet of instructions and information provided by manufacturers.

Imagine, you are watching TV on your Samsung SmartTV talking with your girl or friend, or you are watching stock news from your office with your client, while the Smart TV is collecting audio and video to improve your experience by sending your words to third parties.

On Reddit news website was started a few days ago an interesting discussion titled “Samsung SmartTV Privacy 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.”

The users were commenting the privacy policy that Samsung share with its customers for the use of the Voice Recognition system.

Under the Voice Recognition section of the policy is reported:

“If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. 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.

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. 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. 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.”

Samsung admits that its Voice Recognition, Gesture Controls and Facial Recognition technology, is collecting user’s voice data and images and it is sending it to a third party to improve its system.

Don’t worry, Samsung gives users the right to opt out of these features, because it takes care of our privacy. The owner of Samsung SmartTV can disable these features at any time.

Who are the third parties mentioned by Samsung and how they manage the collected data? Which are the respective Privacy Policy?

I stop here .. we can discuss for hours, but for situations like this the Samsung SmartTV we will find a thousand in the year to come. We have also to consider that hackers could exploit these features to hack our domestic network with serious consequences.
Let’s pay more attention to our privacy and the way the technology of the devices around us is using our data.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  Samsung SmartTV, privacy)