Samsung Smart TV 'Surveillance' Leads to FTC Complaint

A complaint filed by a privacy group with the US Federal Trade Commission accused Samsung's smart TVs of intercepting and recording consumers' private communications in their homes, violating a number of rules, including the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center asked the FTC

investigate and stop Samsung's practice

to collect private communications and transmit the recordings to a third party.

The group, which has been embroiled in FTC privacy cases that led to settlements with Google and Facebook, also asked the agency to investigate other companies engaged in practices similar to Samsung's. .

The South Korean company's privacy policy for its Smart TV has been criticized for warning customers to "please be aware that if your lyrics contain personal information or other sensitive information, that information will be from

data entered and transmitted to a third party

through your use of voice recognition.

Alleging a violation of FTC law, EPIC said users were generally unaware that Samsung smart TVs would record and transmit their private conversations over the Internet.

Users are "so outraged" by the company's recording and transmission practices that they are calling for class action lawsuits, he added.

These television users "could not reasonably avoid being aware of

Samsung's failure to encrypt

all recorded voice transmissions,” EPIC added, citing a researcher’s findings on the matter.

Samsung also markets its smart TVs to children under 13 and records children's voices as part of its practice of collecting and transmitting in-home conversations to a third party, violating COPPA rules that require the obtaining parental consent for collection and transmission. children's voices, according to the file.

Samsung defended itself by saying the TV will collect interactive voice commands

only when the user makes "a search request specific to the Smart TV

by clicking the activation button on the remote or on your screen and speaking into the remote's microphone. It identified Nuance Communications as the voice-to-text recognizer.

Users can turn off data collection for voice recognition, but that would prevent some of the TVs' voice recognition features from being used, he added.

EPIC claims Samsung's voice technology violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which prohibits "the interception and disclosure of wired, oral, or electronic communications."

Samsung did not respond to a request for comment on the EPIC complaint on Thursday.

US Senator Al Franken asked Samsung and LG Electronics earlier this month

to explain their privacy policies

, including whether it was necessary for businesses to collect personal communications in order to operate the voice recognition feature.

Note: When you buy something after clicking on links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our

affiliate link policy

for more details.