Samsung recently came under fire for its Smart TV privacy policy that many called Orwellian. As the news gathered steam Samsung tried to explain its end but the message just couldn’t go through. So today it has edited the privacy policy to better explain what’s going on and has also said that its Smart TVs in no way monitor users’ living room conversations.
The privacy policy stated that users should be aware if their spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, because that information “will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”
Many took this as a warning from Samsung to censor themselves in front of their Smart TVs because it could pick up on potentially sensitive information. Since there was lack of clarity about how Samsung’s voice recognition feature works the story simply went on a different track.
Samsung took to its official blog today to clearly state that its Smart TVs are not wired to “monitor living rooms conversations.” In order to make it easier for people to understand how this feature works Samsung has also edited its privacy policy.
No longer does the policy recommend users to censor themselves in front of their Smart TV if they don’t want their sensitive information to be potentially compromised.
Samsung clarifies that its Smart TVs are not capable of listening in on conversations. A user action is required every time the Voice Recognition feature has to be triggered.
Only then the “interactive voice commands” are collected, and they can be commands that make the TV search for movies or shows, basically what the user says in the remote’s microphone after activating the feature.
The updated privacy policy can be perused at Samsung’s blog.