Description
Writer: Brett Stelmaszek
Editor: Joshua Lambourne Stevenson
Music by: @UFD-Music
Oh great, Samsung’s committing privacy horrors with their TVs, just like LG.
There’s been a recent burst of finding out what exactly all these smart televisions are collecting on their users, and it’s been nothing short of frightening.
When tinkering with their new TV, this developer found that by default it was doing “automatic content recognition, geo positioning, network mapping, a targeted ads service, 4 distinct drm services, user profile building and so much more juicy telemetry!”
The most concerning was the “always on hot mic functionality” that was continuously listening. But even when the TVs microphone was shut down, it re-routed to trying to listen to users via a connected soundbar or other bluetooth device that actually has a microphone.
They weren’t able to show that feature working, but its details are found in the logs on the TV itself.