Samsung smart TV policy allows company to listen in on users

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/samsungs-new-smart-tv-policy-allows-company-to-listen-in-on-users-10033012.html

The new privacy policy for Samsung’s smart TVs allows the company and its partners to listen in on everything their users say. The policy states: “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 through your use of Voice Recognition.” It makes clear that the tool can be turned off through settings, though that will stop the voice recognition working entirely and Samsung will still continue to collect data about how people use the TV. The privacy policy has drawn much controversy though, because it has been compared to a passage in George Orwell's book 1984, in which it reads: “Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by [the screen], moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.”

• The company says it stores this data and, under its privacy policy, states that it can share it with ‘affiliates and vendors
• And it’s not just television sets. It emerged that millions of Britons are being spied on by Microsoft’s voice-activated Xbox games consoles, which can listen in to everything around them. 
  In its privacy policy, Microsoft states that it is ‘only interested in your voice commands to Xbox, which we capture along with any ambient background noise. If you give Microsoft permission, we record commands whether you are online or offline’.

It has become increasingly more obvious that as technology evolves faster and faster, and becomes more prevalent in our everyday lives, it appears as though it comes at the cost to our privacy, meaning that unless we become paranoid enough to have to switch all of our devices at the mains, we could be listened in on at any given moment, sharing our lives with other people, even if we may not want to or are aware of doing.