We had reported how Samsung’s Smart TV eavesdrops on owners and reports it back to Samsung servers. Samsung had come out with a shocking suggestion that its smart TV owners should not discuss personal information in front of the TV. Its privacy policy also reveals the fact that the smart TV is capable of spying on the owners. Samsung warns that customers should “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.” This sort of news can make any potential Samsung smart TV buyer nervous about investing 1000s of dollars in a snooping machine that could disclose personal secrets to unknown persons somewhere across the globe. However, there are many collararies attached to this spying TV business which you should know. Not all Samsung smart TVs have snooping capabilities. While most of Samsung’s Smart TVs have some sort of voice function, almost all of them require you to press the microphone button on the remote before it starts listening. Only the advanced and costlier Samsung models that can recognize your voice are the ones that include a built-in camera and microphone, such as the Samsung PN60F8500.
How do I stop my Samsung TV from listening?
Now if you are an owner of a high-end Samsung smart TV, you can simply disable the voice recognition feature in settings and stop the TV from spying on you. To do this, head to the Settings menu and select Smart Features. Then scroll down to Voice Recognition and switch it off. While you will no longer be able to use the “Hi TV” command to activate the voice features, you can still access them by pressing the microphone button on your remote. In Samsung TV models (2017-2019): Open the main menu and click the Settings icon. Now go to Support and scroll down to Terms and Policies. Click Turn off the Voice Recognition Services option. If you consider that even this is a big task for you, you should dump the idea of buying a high-end Samsung smart TV and go for some cheaper version/other brands instead.
