If You Have a Smart TV in the Magic Valley, It May Be Watching YOU
This is not exactly a new issue, but now that there are more powerful smart TV's on the market, there are new concerns that your privacy is at great risk.
C/NET and The Week magazine first reported on this issue a couple years ago after reading the fine print of the Samsung privacy policy that came with their smart televisions. It said the following:
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.
How scary is that? If you're sitting in the privacy of your living room, watching TV and talking about where your kids are attending school, that info could be transmitted to a third party company. Not good at all.
This isn't just a problem with Samsung smart TV's, but also affects Vizio and other models also.
This problem has only become more frightening over the past 2 years thanks to the fact that speech recognition is now a very common feature of just about every TV that is sold.
The bottom line is that you need to educate yourself about what information your TV is collecting from you and what is being done with that information. It may be wise to disable any built-in cameras and microphones that come with your TV in the settings menu to limit what is being seen and/or heard. Yes, it sucks to lose features you get with your TV, but ultimately you'll have to decide which is more important to you: features or privacy.