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from the and-who-thought-that-this-was-a-good-idea? dept.
The BBC has said that Samsung has issued a warning to its customers over their smart TVs, saying that people shouldn't talk about personal information in front them. When using the voice activation feature of the smart TV, it will listen to everything you say and may share that with Samsung and third parties.
This only came to light when The DailyBeast posted a new story pointing out part of the privacy policy...
"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"
Corynne McSherry, an IP lawyer for EFF, told The DailyBeast that the "third party" was probably the company providing speech-to-text conversion for Samsung. They also said: "If I were the customer, I might like to know who that third party was, and I’d definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form."
(Score: 5, Informative) by bryan on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:20AM
Ditto for anyone with a modern laptop or smart phone. They all have webcams and microphones built in. Some don't even bother to include an LED "active" light to warn you when the device is being used. Others have the light, but implement it badly in software so that nefarious programs can still use the camera without turning on the light.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 10 2015, @03:31AM
duct tape to the rescue
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:48AM
Duct tape is a bit too aggressive (cleaning that residue off if I want to use the camera or sell the laptop would be a pain). I clip the adhesive strip from a post-it note and use that. Stays on just fine until I want to remove it. Won't totally black out the camera but best someone may be able to do is tell if the lights are on or not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday February 10 2015, @01:03PM
Electrical tape looks better and blocks those horrific late 90s blue LEDs. The adhesive for both can be dissolved with any oil or solvent, just not water based. So a drop of cooking oil to soften it up with a q-tip and that sticker-cleaner stuff from the car cleaning section of the store.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday February 10 2015, @04:11PM
Blue LED? 2000 ce. Before that, they were green and red - occasionally yellow and orange.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:38PM
If you use Linux, you can just blacklist the webcam driver.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday February 11 2015, @02:47AM
Won't work if you need some specific program that will only run on Microsoft Windows..
So hardware blocks is the shit.
(Score: 2) by redneckmother on Tuesday February 10 2015, @04:29PM
Black Sharpie to the rescue!
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Tuesday February 10 2015, @04:08AM
There is no such thing as a "good" implementation for a camera LED in software. Software can be bypassed. It's either a hardware LED physically wired to the power to the camera, or it's not good enough.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:44AM
Cameras are also showing up in smart TVs for use with Skype and other apps. Most people won't even realize they are there since they will probably never use the functionality.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EvilSS on Tuesday February 10 2015, @07:50AM
Oh, and let's not forget XBox Connect.... Actually, are any new consumer electronics NOT spying on us?