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I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a Godwining! Nazi Smart TVs indeed.

It gets better.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31424596

Samsung investigates why its TVs put ads in others' apps

Samsung says it is investigating why some of its smart TVs are adding adverts to television programmes and films played via third-party apps.

Owners have complained of a silent ad for Pepsi interrupting playback several times an hour.

A spokeswoman for Samsung said it was only aware of the glitch affecting customers in Australia at this time
"We are aware of a situation that has caused some smart TV users in Australia to experience programme interruption in the form of an advertisement," the spokeswoman said.

"This seems to be caused by an error, and we are currently conducting a full and thorough investigation into the cause as our top priority.

"This situation has so far been reported only in Australia. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience experienced by our customers."

Users of at least two smart TV apps have complained about the issue:

Plex - media centre software that allows owners to stream video files stored on a hard disk to other equipment. In most cases, the user would not expect to see any ads at all when using this
Foxtel Play - an app installed by default on Samsung's Australian TVs, which provides access to the pay TV network's channels, which have ads of their own

News site Ars Technica noted that Samsung and Yahoo had been working together on a way to show pop-up ads on Samsung's smart TVs and suggested that the software involved might be the cause of the fault.

It said some users had been able to stop the ads appearing by rejecting a "Yahoo privacy policy" in the affected TV set's settings.


Voice recognition

Samsung's PR team is also dealing with a backlash prompted by fears that its smart TV sets might be "spying" on their watchers' conversations.

Concern was raised by a privacy policy that stated: "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."

Several commentators compared the policy to the surveillance state depicted in George Orwell's novel 1984.

Samsung has since clarified the situation, saying there are two microphones involved:

One built into the TV set, which responds to pre-set commands, such as, "Turn the volume up," but does not store or transmit the user's words while doing so
Another embedded in its remote control, which does send speech to a third-party service - currently the voice recognition specialist Nuance - to let the TV respond to complex commands, including requests for movie recommendations. In addition, it said, the commands could be collected and studied by Samsung itself

The South Korean company said it had now altered its privacy document to read: "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.

"If you do not enable Voice Recognition, you will not be able to use interactive voice recognition features, although you may be able to control your TV using certain predefined voice commands."

So remember, if you must have sex HIDE THE REMOTE. No not there

I'm never buying a Samsung ever again!

Moral of the story just don't buy their freaking TVs.

Quite a stroke of genius to put the spying device in the remote, as that is the part that is least likely to be found after being lost in the couch cushions.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I'm never buying a Samsung ever again!

I came to that conclusion some years ago.
The product always seemed to expire, one day after the warranty.

1984?

Popup adds for Smart TVs??

Is there an Adblock for tvs yet?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
In the USA, you watch tv.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA TV WATCH YOU!!!



Oh wait...
That is in reverse now.
Reversed Russian reversal?

In Putin's Russia...even they're not this bat gak insane.

We still have a "dumb" tv - even if it is a relatively modern one (4 year old flatscreen).
Not planning on getting a "smart tv" - and if we find ourself "having to" by dint of no other options available, we'll just leave voice ops switched OFF.

My phone DOES have voice commands, but at least I have to hold a control to get it to listen. And unlike Siri, it understands what I tell it.

In the words of an old comedian. And there's more
Not only do Samsung TVs “listen in” on their owners, but when they do, they send data to third parties without any encryption – making it easier to intercept and decode.

Well-known security researcher David Lodge from Pen Test Partners conducted an attempted interception of a data packet sent from a Samsung Smart TV, which receives data spoken into a microphone attached to a remote, and sends it to the internet for interpretation.

Lodge was surprised to discover that the data packets lacked encryption – commonly used when sensitive data is being transferred - so the words he spoke to the set could be discerned as such in the data file.

“What we can see is it sending a load of information over the wire about the TV, I can see its MAC address and the version of the OS in use. After the word buffer_id is a load of binary data, which looks audio-ish,” explained Lodge. “Based on the limited information leaked above in plaintext, there’s plenty to suggest that interesting data is making its way on to the interwebs from your TV. Come on Samsung, how about at least protecting it with SSL?”

Accusations of failure to sufficiently encrypt data, and store it only in safe locations, have plagued other online products in recent years, including Skype and chat program Viber.


It is impossible to access the data packets without hacking into the internet pathway between the TV and the servers to which it sends its data – a task that requires significant expertise, though easily within the scope of the NSA, GCHQ or any other intelligence agency.

Lodge reassures that by design the remote listening function does not record and process data, unless it is switched on by the user, but said that dangers remained.

“The potential for a rogue firmware update enabling ‘snooping’ is significant,” wrote Lodge.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
In the USA, you watch tv.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA TV WATCH YOU!!!



Oh wait...
That is in reverse now.
Reversed Russian reversal?

This is how holes are ripped in the time space continuum! Knock that off