Samsung Mobile/AV really seem to want to kick themselves while down

[Orb]

So while other core aspects are ticking along nicely at Samsung such as their chip development/fabrication, it really does seem the more consumer front end is really trying to kick themselves while they are down and struggling at the moment....
It now seems the AV team has now joined in doing something really stupid and it involved their new technology-TVs; specifically Smart TVs.

News has been circulating that the smart TV can actually record what one says and part of their "license-product agreement" is that the TV can send captured audio "data" back to Samsung that will then be used with 3rd parties to "improve" services.
Now on top of that these smart TVs are pushing selected ads to owners of said TVs, and while originally they stated it would be confined and easy to opt out, the reality is very different....
I swear some people should never make it to VP positions in large companies lol, idiotic whoever thought this would end well.
Interesting read in the following links.
Samsung’s Smart TVs gather and transmit potentially private information to third parties: http://www.extremetech.com/computin...entially-private-information-to-third-parties
Samsung Smart TVs inject ads where they don’t belong: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199152-samsung-smart-tvs-inject-ads-where-they-dont-belong

Difficult not to comment on such aspect, they better get on top of this before the products mass sell otherwise I think they are in for a whirlwind of customer backlash.
Cheers
Orb

 

[FrantzM]

Thanks for the head-up Orb... Very, very disturbing.

 

[audioarcher]

This is messed up. Seems like a dumb way to make a little extra money.

 

[amirm]

Problem is, they decide they should act like Apple and Google. If the they are doing ads, they want to do ads. If they are doing apps, they want to do apps. They forget that competence needs to go with it.

I bought my 4K Samsung TV. It said it came with a nice feature to push what I am seeing on my laptop onto the TV. So I download the app, play with that feature which was half-nice. Then a few hours later I notice my laptop is very sluggish. Pop up the performance monitor and I see the stupid app scanning my PC for I assume media files like there is no tomorrow. Let it run for some time and it never finished. I think it was trying to transcode them or something. Couldn't uninstall it fast enough.

Anyway, back to this problem, what is happening is that if you use their voice recognition feature on the remote, they obviously capture everything that is being said including background conversation and ship it up to a service to perform voice recognition. Fine. That is what Google does too on your phone. Problem is, I would not in a million years trust Samsung as I trust Google with such data. And they sure has heck better be clear about such things and not fess up now after the scandal. Get yourself some privacy and security experts like Microsoft, etc. have and take these matters seriously.

 

[FrantzM]

Cybersecurity has become a serious issue. THose companies are playing Sorcerer apprentices. We are at a interesting but scary threshold . Will read on these and ways to disable that kind of (anyway half-baked) apps.

Thanks Guys ...