Some interactive voice commands may be transferred to Nuance Communications to convert the commands into text to the extent necessary for Voice Recognition to function. Samsung only collects your voice commands when you request a search, i.e. when you press the Voice Recognition activation button on your Smart TV remote control (or on your screen) and speak into the microphone.
Whatever you say (near) the remote control microphone if you request an internet search will be transferred to Nuance Communications to convert it into text and have the Smart TV the search, Samsung explains.
In this way, Samsung is responding to the strong concern caused by the language in the privacy policy that accompanies Smart TVs with Voice Recognition - the ability to control them with voice commands.
In a post on the Samsung Tomorrow blog titled “Samsung Smart TVs Don’t Listen to Living Room Conversations,” the company claims the confusion stems from a passage in its privacy policy that stated that “if what you say includes personal or other sensitive information, it will be recorded and transmitted to the third party.” This note has been removed:
"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."
In Samsung's blog post, there is a reference to data encryption, although data encryption is not mentioned in the reworded excerpt of the privacy policy.
The revised excerpt (highlights from tech.in.gr):
"If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some interactive voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service provider (currently, Nuance Communications, Inc.) that converts your interactive voice commands to text and 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. Samsung will collect your interactive voice commands only when you make a specific search request to the Smart TV by clicking the activation button either on the remote control or on your screen and speaking into the microphone on the remote control.
In any case, the study by ENISA, the European agency for network and information security, indicates Smart TVs as the first target of would-be criminals for attacks on the "smart" home, and therefore it is obvious that manufacturers and all those involved should cooperate and follow the countermeasures prescribed by ENISA.
Source: tech.in.gr
