Don't talk in front of a Samsung smart-TV

Not in front of the telly: Warning over 'listening' TV

Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set.

The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.

When the feature is active, such TV sets "listen" to what is said and may share what they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.

Privacy campaigners said the technology smacked of the telescreens, in George Orwell's 1984, which spied on citizens.

HERE is the official warning from Samsung.

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Well, I don't know about the "Big Brother" threat from the newest Samsung "smart" TVs, but I do know that almost all websites use what is known as "Bots" in order to track where you go and what you do online. These "bots" are either built-in to your normal usage by the likes of Google or Bing and they pick out key-words that you may type and target you with ads connected to these key-words. ( BTW, these are not just "cookies", which most of us already know about, they are much cleverer bits of kit ).

I am not one bit surprised that these "listening" smart-TVs are often just too "smart" for words.

Anybody ?

Nice one Paps.

I saw this on the BBC news two nights ago.

It is actually quite good that Samsung themselves have issued this advice.

I have noticed that on my work laptop and on my home computer, Google offer a very similar service.

I found recently that if you leave this voice-operated search option switched on, it too listens for everything that we say after we have done the actual voice-search.

There is no doubt about it that since the growth of the internet and the number of ways that it is now hitched to our lives, the "Big Brother" scenario is coming closer and closer

I also heard recently that if you have a camera on your lap-top or your computer it can be remotely switched on by just about anybody that has the technical capability. Afterwards, everything the camera sees can be watched by God-knows who.

Yes, you are right about that.

These so-called "autonomous" programmes are watching us and listening to us most of our waking hours.

I wonder where all of this is going to stop ?

In other words, the real "Big Brother" is going to be a "listening" kind of spy rather than a "watching" kind of spy

Mind you I did read somewhere that Britain has more public closed-circuit cameras working than any other country in the world.

If they put the sound into these pictures we will then certainly be under the surveillance that was shown in the film 1984.

Yes, you are right about that fact Angie.

This IS the most surveilled country in the world.

I think we might be shocked to learn just how many CCTV cameras are trained on us just about everywhere we go.

Glad I don't have TV, smart or otherwise, I just watch catchup on my laptop. And I have taped over the camera.

Everybody to his or her own I guess HG.