The smart home is listening to everything you say.
Should you watch what you say in front of a Samsung Smart TV? A privacy policy warns that the voice-recognition feature records what you say and sends it to a third party. But as our sister-site ZDNet reports, a third party is most likely Nuance, a voice-recognition software provider that works with many tech companies to convert speech into text.
Several smart devices can be set to "always listen" for your voice command -- including the Amazon Echo, Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, and some Android smartphones . Consumers need to be concerned about privacy and security of such data, and companies need to be transparent in explaining what is being done with it. Samsung says it encrypts the data, and also does not keep the voice data or sell it to third parties. So you don't have to worry about advertisers listening to your conversations... for now:
Also in this tech-news roundup:
- See what channel is coming soon to Sling TV's $20-monthly plan.
- After a fraud scare, you can once again use TurboTax to file state income tax returns.
- Beware of phishing emails and calls regarding the Anthem data breach.
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