Just learned my smart TV listens to me 24/7 for targeted ads

I was messing with my TV settings last night and found a toggle for 'voice data collection' - turns out Samsung has been recording snippets of conversation to serve me ads based on what I say. Their privacy policy says it's to 'improve voice recognition features,' but has anyone else dug into these TV settings and found something creepy?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_xena2d ago

Wait, didn't that toggle literally say it improves voice recognition features?

bennett.patricia2d ago

...and that's exactly what my roommate said until his phone started showing him ads for frozen pizza after he complained about freezer burn. Look, I'm not saying the TV is secretly recording everything for the CIA or anything like that. But I found a similar setting on my Roku last week and it had already stored voice samples from three days ago, including me telling my cat to stop knocking things off the counter. The part that got me was when I looked up how to disable it completely, the instructions said I had to agree to a separate data collection agreement just to turn it off. So either they're really bad at explaining their features or there's something fishy going on. I ended up just unplugging the TV and using my laptop for streaming because that whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. Your mileage may vary, but I'd rather watch ads the normal way than have my living room be a focus group.