Samsung SmartTVs Are Spying On You

[CrystalShadow]

Yeah, I see a lot of services do this.

Microsoft is constantly prompting me to 'send them anonymous usage data'. Google is the same. (Hello google voice... XD), etc, and so on.

At this point I wonder sometimes what ISN'T spying on me in some way...

This seems like kind of a given though, right? Modern voice recognition requires your devices to send your speech to external companies (or, best case scenario, the same company's servers a la Google). It's non-private by definition.

if your voice recognition software is sane it will do recognition locally. conencting to other service to do that is just a very very stupid way of doing it.

Except it's not sane at all a lot of the time. I know for a fact my tablet only seems to do voice recognition while I have an internet connection, and it's spelled out somewhere that the processing is often done on a remote server.

That's not to say it can't be done locally, but clearly, some companies use web-services to do it.

Presumably arguing that the servers have way more processing power to throw at it than the device doing the recognition has. Which is probably quite true for phones and tablets, but still means you are transmitting voice data over the internet and having it processed on a server.

When you think about it this would make a near ideal spying service in some ways, because not only do you have voice samples of people, you have a service, which by it's very nature can provide easily searchable text transcripts of what the people in these samples are saying to one another...
(Error prone maybe, but it would allow you to quickly find people talking about a certain subject, and then check the voice samples themselves to see if there are transcription errors...)

 

[Strazdas]

Except it's not sane at all a lot of the time. I know for a fact my tablet only seems to do voice recognition while I have an internet connection, and it's spelled out somewhere that the processing is often done on a remote server.

That's not to say it can't be done locally, but clearly, some companies use web-services to do it.

Presumably arguing that the servers have way more processing power to throw at it than the device doing the recognition has. Which is probably quite true for phones and tablets, but still means you are transmitting voice data over the internet and having it processed on a server.

When you think about it this would make a near ideal spying service in some ways, because not only do you have voice samples of people, you have a service, which by it's very nature can provide easily searchable text transcripts of what the people in these samples are saying to one another...
(Error prone maybe, but it would allow you to quickly find people talking about a certain subject, and then check the voice samples themselves to see if there are transcription errors...)

Once again, sane and companies doing it is not the same thing. Your tablet is doing it because the owner of the app (guessing google?) wants to track what you are recognizing to track you and sell that data. for this reason they do not allow local processing.

companies use web-services because they have a vested interest in you sending data to them.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Except it's not sane at all a lot of the time. I know for a fact my tablet only seems to do voice recognition while I have an internet connection, and it's spelled out somewhere that the processing is often done on a remote server.

That's not to say it can't be done locally, but clearly, some companies use web-services to do it.

Presumably arguing that the servers have way more processing power to throw at it than the device doing the recognition has. Which is probably quite true for phones and tablets, but still means you are transmitting voice data over the internet and having it processed on a server.

When you think about it this would make a near ideal spying service in some ways, because not only do you have voice samples of people, you have a service, which by it's very nature can provide easily searchable text transcripts of what the people in these samples are saying to one another...
(Error prone maybe, but it would allow you to quickly find people talking about a certain subject, and then check the voice samples themselves to see if there are transcription errors...)

Once again, sane and companies doing it is not the same thing. Your tablet is doing it because the owner of the app (guessing google?) wants to track what you are recognizing to track you and sell that data. for this reason they do not allow local processing.

companies use web-services because they have a vested interest in you sending data to them.

That's a bit redundant though, as a concept. Since a lot of these voice features are searches of sorts, you get close to the same result from doing the voice recognition on the device itself and passing the result to a server.

Actually processing the voice stuff on the server makes little sense from an advertising perspective when you are mostly dealing with search related functionality anyway...

 

[Remus]

Good, another reason not to buy Samsung TVs. I already gave up on them on account of the delay between picture and audio that was a common, and repeated, problem with their larger models. So nothing lost, but a bit of justification definitely gained.

 

[Someone Depressing]

I was thinking about replacing my TV. Not with one of those pieces of shit, but I very fleetingly considered it before foreseeing something as equally scummy as this.

It's sad, really. And the truth is most won't care.

 

[kasperbbs]

http://www.sammobile.com/2015/02/10/samsung-edits-privacy-policy-reiterates-that-smart-tvs-are-not-listening-in-on-your-conversations/

This article explains how this stuff works, assuming that all of it is true then theres no need to worry, you paranoid bastards.

 

[Petromir]

http://www.sammobile.com/2015/02/10/samsung-edits-privacy-policy-reiterates-that-smart-tvs-are-not-listening-in-on-your-conversations/

This article explains how this stuff works, assuming that all of it is true then theres no need to worry, you paranoid bastards.

Hush and put on a tinfoil hat or they'll spot you as sane...

 

[Jiggle Counter]

I own a Samsung SmartTV series 8, and I turned the voice feature off from the get-go.

It wouldn't bother me at all if they were listening in, they wouldn't get much from my house hold.


"Psst! What are they saying?"

"Um, commercials suck, what's for dinner, and now they're fighting over who made a mess and who's going to clean the dishes tonight"

Other than that you need to be really clear with your voice when it comes to voice commands, kinda like a really bad uncover cop.

"So uh, you got the stuff?"

"YES, I HAVE THE, CO-CAINE, RIGHT HERE, FOR YOU, TO BUY, FROM ME, MR DRUG DEALER"

If you don't speak up, the tv just doesn't comprehend.

 

[truckspond]

Wait... You deliberately put an always-on camera and microphone in your living room... and you expect it to NOT spy on you...

Maybe use a little common sense in your next TV purchase...

 

[Strazdas]

That's a bit redundant though, as a concept. Since a lot of these voice features are searches of sorts, you get close to the same result from doing the voice recognition on the device itself and passing the result to a server.

Actually processing the voice stuff on the server makes little sense from an advertising perspective when you are mostly dealing with search related functionality anyway...

when you deal with search related functions - yes. but that is not all that voice recognition is being used for. for example i know people that use voice recognition to write in word or compose emails.