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> You may disable Voice Recognition data collection at any time by visiting the “settings” menu. However, this may prevent you from using all of the Voice Recog

by imgabe 12y ago

> You may disable Voice Recognition data collection at any time by visiting the “settings” menu. However, this may prevent you from using all of the Voice Recognition features. from here: https://www.samsung.com/uk/info/privacy-SmartTV.html https://www.samsung.com/uk/info/privacy-SmartTV.html So, disable it. I don't understand everybody's fascination with voice recognition. I don't find it more convenient at all. I'd much rather just push a button. It's really not that complicated.

maxerickson 12y ago
I can think of at least a couple of situations where it could be useful. I've seen some people have an awful time using a remote in a darkened room. Also, free text search is useful when you are trying to search.
learnstats2 12y ago
It used to be the case that a service would politely ask you whether or not they could collect data about you, and would provide the same service in both cases. This option (to minimise data collection/retention) ought to be enshrined in law. If you pay (or not) for a service, you should be able to get the service without the expectation of your personal and private data being harvested.
- vidarh 12y ago
  In this case the issue is that it is not possible for them to provide the service without potentially collecting private data: The voice recognition is done on remote servers, and they have no means of preventing you from saying something private when it is recording.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    The TV could store a "wake up" word locally. The TV doesn't send any audio anywhere until you speak the wakeup word, at which point in beeps and a light flashes and then all audio is sent away to the cloud for processing.
    - chkuendig 12y ago
      This is exactly how Amazon Echo does it: Amazon Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Amazon Echo detects the wake word, Amazon Echo streams audio to the Cloud, including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
      - mkal_tsr 12y ago
        > including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word. Interesting that they are able to transmit audio-data that occurred prior to the wake word being said (in essence to transmit the wake word). Looks like Amazon is keen to redefine "collected" just like other groups are...
        ars 12y ago
        Why is that interesting? It's quite simple since the device is always listening locally, and just storing a second of audio in a buffer. It's not "collected" since it only has 1 second of audio until it wakes up.
        mkal_tsr 12y ago
        Because every time Amazon echo comes up, people always rush it "don't worry guys, it's not actually recording anything until it has to send to the cloud" and by Amazon's own admission, that's patently false.
        ars 12y ago
        Um, no, that's patently true. Unless you are talking about the half second before the trigger word? But even then - it only sends when triggered.
        mkal_tsr 12y ago
  - learnstats2 12y ago
    > The voice recognition is done on remote servers While possible, this is not theoretically necessary, and I find this highly doubtful in practice. What about the delay on each voice command as it pings the server? If it was generally the case that voice commands were sent remotely, I suggest usability would be 0.
    - maccard 12y ago
      Siri, and Cortana (iOS and WP8 voice recognition engines) both send the clip to a remote server to perform recognition. There are many services that provide real time processing of large amounts of data on server cluster/farms, and more are coming. It is very much possible to perform large computations in almost real time in these situations, and you'd be surprised at how little latency people notice, particularly when there's no indication of what the actual number is.
      - learnstats2 12y ago
        I wasn't aware that people generally found Siri usable.
        thanksgiving 12y ago
        It is genuinely comic when I see what kind of questions my non-technical friends ask Siri. I can't imagine the thought process of how Siri could put together the information from the ramblings of a person much less answer the query...
        maccard 12y ago
        That doesn't add anything to this discussion. Siri is more than usable for a lot of things - I can set alarms, timers, and make calls without reaching for my phone. I'm not saying that it's revolutionary, but it definitely works.
        learnstats2 12y ago
        From my point of view it did add significantly to the discussion. I'm surprised to learn that people do use Siri in genuine situations, so thanks for your reply in that regard; although I still feel gratified that another commenter has the same experience that I do.
wodenokoto 12y ago
Right now it isn't so useful, but once stuff like "put on that Wes Andersen movie where they ride on a train all the time" becomes useful, I see why voice might be preferred over a button, especially in China, where voice search already has a big share of all search. But I agree. I'd much rather have a dumb tv and upgrade my attached boxes.
- maccard 12y ago
  > But I agree. I'd much rather have a dumb tv and upgrade my attached boxes. So you trust the manafacturer/software provider of your attached box more than that of the TV?
  - MereInterest 12y ago
    When it is a machine that I have built myself, running an open operating system, then yes, I do give that much more trust than the TV manufacturer.
  - wodenokoto 12y ago
    I get to choose box separate from screen. Means I can get a box with microphone if I trust the company, or one without if I dont. What I don't like is paying for smart tv features that don't work or don't trust just to get a screen. Maybe the company that makes great screens make untrustable smart tv features, and maybe the open source smart tv of the future sits in a crappy screen. More probably the smart tv features gets outdated before the screen.
- rasz_pl 12y ago
  >"put on that Wes Andersen movie where they ride on a train all the time" starts playing 'Resident Evil'
failed_ideas 12y ago
I'm thinking it's quite handy for a quadriplegics, those with learning disabilities, children, elderly, arthritis sufferers, parkinson's sufferers, thalidomide sufferers, disable in general, etc... Just because it's not useful to you doesn't mean that it's not the number one feature in someone else's life.
- imgabe 12y ago
  Sure, I'm not saying it shouldn't exist. If it's a feature you want, then you need to accept the fact that it has to send data to a remote server in order for it to do the thing you want it to do. If you have concerns about privacy, then disable it. I don't see the point of all this hand-wringing about "OMG Samsung is spying on me!". Like there's somebody listening on the other end, waiting for you to start reciting your bank account info in the living room so they can pick it up, you know, like how people sit around in front of their TV doing that, right?
  - failed_ideas 12y ago
    Well, I frequently see the people mentioned above, especially the elderly needing help with their phones or email or online banking, and giving their passwords to a trusted family member thinking that they are the only ones listening. So yea, it happens, a LOT. And big companies like Samsung and Sony never get hacked, right? MITM never happen, that's jus fantasy, right?
    - imgabe 12y ago
      If that's a concern, you shouldn't use any online service at all. There's nothing special about voice command that makes it more susceptible to being hacked than every other service that you use every single day. In fact, it's a great deal more difficult, because now the attacker has to have an equally sophisticated voice recognition system at their disposal in order to interpret the intercepted data. Besides, when they can hack the database itself and get a list of what they know to be passwords, why wouldn't they just do that instead of hacking a bunch of voice snippets and combing through them hoping to maybe find where somebody said a password. It's stupid.
vidarh 12y ago
Try a Fire TV box for a while. Search on devices without a keyboard is far easier with voice recognition. I agree the fascination may be excessive, but there are a few legitimate use cases where it's not obnoxious (anyone within hearing will likely end up listening to the TV anyway, so presumably you have their acceptance for noise in the first place) and actually useful, and searching for stuff to watch is one.
- flavor8 12y ago
  So push a button to start voice recognition? Always on is not worth the potential privacy tradeoff.
jkot 12y ago
Except its often automatically enabled after software update.
intopieces 12y ago
You're a technologically savvy person who keeps up with privacy news. At issue here is the precedent set: more and more devices by default transmit private information to third party servers without the knowledge of the users. Further, people who do not intend to be users (i.e., guests in a home with a SmartTV) suddenly are having their private information scooped up and stored without their consent. It requires a level of vigilance that not every person will have. Do I need to ask my host if they have a SmartTV with this function?
wdr1 12y ago
> So, disable it. I don't understand everybody's fascination with voice recognition. I don't find it more convenient at all. If you have small children, it's incredibly handy. Even with Chrome, it's much easier to sneak in a quick click of a button & then say my query than to try to type it all out.

by imgabe 12y ago

maxerickson 12y ago

I can think of at least a couple of situations where it could be useful. I've seen some people have an awful time using a remote in a darkened room. Also, free text search is useful when you are trying to search.

learnstats2 12y ago

It used to be the case that a service would politely ask you whether or not they could collect data about you, and would provide the same service in both cases. This option (to minimise data collection/retention) ought to be enshrined in law. If you pay (or not) for a service, you should be able to get the service without the expectation of your personal and private data being harvested.

vidarh 12y ago
In this case the issue is that it is not possible for them to provide the service without potentially collecting private data: The voice recognition is done on remote servers, and they have no means of preventing you from saying something private when it is recording.
- DanBC 12y ago
  The TV could store a "wake up" word locally. The TV doesn't send any audio anywhere until you speak the wakeup word, at which point in beeps and a light flashes and then all audio is sent away to the cloud for processing.
  - chkuendig 12y ago
    This is exactly how Amazon Echo does it: Amazon Echo uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Amazon Echo detects the wake word, Amazon Echo streams audio to the Cloud, including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201602230 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
    - mkal_tsr 12y ago
      > including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word. Interesting that they are able to transmit audio-data that occurred prior to the wake word being said (in essence to transmit the wake word). Looks like Amazon is keen to redefine "collected" just like other groups are...
      - ars 12y ago
        Why is that interesting? It's quite simple since the device is always listening locally, and just storing a second of audio in a buffer. It's not "collected" since it only has 1 second of audio until it wakes up.
        mkal_tsr 12y ago
        Because every time Amazon echo comes up, people always rush it "don't worry guys, it's not actually recording anything until it has to send to the cloud" and by Amazon's own admission, that's patently false.
        ars 12y ago
        Um, no, that's patently true. Unless you are talking about the half second before the trigger word? But even then - it only sends when triggered.
        mkal_tsr 12y ago
- learnstats2 12y ago
  > The voice recognition is done on remote servers While possible, this is not theoretically necessary, and I find this highly doubtful in practice. What about the delay on each voice command as it pings the server? If it was generally the case that voice commands were sent remotely, I suggest usability would be 0.
  - maccard 12y ago
    Siri, and Cortana (iOS and WP8 voice recognition engines) both send the clip to a remote server to perform recognition. There are many services that provide real time processing of large amounts of data on server cluster/farms, and more are coming. It is very much possible to perform large computations in almost real time in these situations, and you'd be surprised at how little latency people notice, particularly when there's no indication of what the actual number is.
    - learnstats2 12y ago
      I wasn't aware that people generally found Siri usable.
      - thanksgiving 12y ago
        It is genuinely comic when I see what kind of questions my non-technical friends ask Siri. I can't imagine the thought process of how Siri could put together the information from the ramblings of a person much less answer the query...
      - maccard 12y ago
        That doesn't add anything to this discussion. Siri is more than usable for a lot of things - I can set alarms, timers, and make calls without reaching for my phone. I'm not saying that it's revolutionary, but it definitely works.
        learnstats2 12y ago
        From my point of view it did add significantly to the discussion. I'm surprised to learn that people do use Siri in genuine situations, so thanks for your reply in that regard; although I still feel gratified that another commenter has the same experience that I do.

wodenokoto 12y ago

Right now it isn't so useful, but once stuff like "put on that Wes Andersen movie where they ride on a train all the time" becomes useful, I see why voice might be preferred over a button, especially in China, where voice search already has a big share of all search. But I agree. I'd much rather have a dumb tv and upgrade my attached boxes.

maccard 12y ago
> But I agree. I'd much rather have a dumb tv and upgrade my attached boxes. So you trust the manafacturer/software provider of your attached box more than that of the TV?
- MereInterest 12y ago
  When it is a machine that I have built myself, running an open operating system, then yes, I do give that much more trust than the TV manufacturer.
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  I get to choose box separate from screen. Means I can get a box with microphone if I trust the company, or one without if I dont. What I don't like is paying for smart tv features that don't work or don't trust just to get a screen. Maybe the company that makes great screens make untrustable smart tv features, and maybe the open source smart tv of the future sits in a crappy screen. More probably the smart tv features gets outdated before the screen.
rasz_pl 12y ago
>"put on that Wes Andersen movie where they ride on a train all the time" starts playing 'Resident Evil'

failed_ideas 12y ago

I'm thinking it's quite handy for a quadriplegics, those with learning disabilities, children, elderly, arthritis sufferers, parkinson's sufferers, thalidomide sufferers, disable in general, etc... Just because it's not useful to you doesn't mean that it's not the number one feature in someone else's life.

imgabe 12y ago
Sure, I'm not saying it shouldn't exist. If it's a feature you want, then you need to accept the fact that it has to send data to a remote server in order for it to do the thing you want it to do. If you have concerns about privacy, then disable it. I don't see the point of all this hand-wringing about "OMG Samsung is spying on me!". Like there's somebody listening on the other end, waiting for you to start reciting your bank account info in the living room so they can pick it up, you know, like how people sit around in front of their TV doing that, right?
- failed_ideas 12y ago
  Well, I frequently see the people mentioned above, especially the elderly needing help with their phones or email or online banking, and giving their passwords to a trusted family member thinking that they are the only ones listening. So yea, it happens, a LOT. And big companies like Samsung and Sony never get hacked, right? MITM never happen, that's jus fantasy, right?
  - imgabe 12y ago
    If that's a concern, you shouldn't use any online service at all. There's nothing special about voice command that makes it more susceptible to being hacked than every other service that you use every single day. In fact, it's a great deal more difficult, because now the attacker has to have an equally sophisticated voice recognition system at their disposal in order to interpret the intercepted data. Besides, when they can hack the database itself and get a list of what they know to be passwords, why wouldn't they just do that instead of hacking a bunch of voice snippets and combing through them hoping to maybe find where somebody said a password. It's stupid.

vidarh 12y ago

Try a Fire TV box for a while. Search on devices without a keyboard is far easier with voice recognition. I agree the fascination may be excessive, but there are a few legitimate use cases where it's not obnoxious (anyone within hearing will likely end up listening to the TV anyway, so presumably you have their acceptance for noise in the first place) and actually useful, and searching for stuff to watch is one.

flavor8 12y ago
So push a button to start voice recognition? Always on is not worth the potential privacy tradeoff.

jkot 12y ago

Except its often automatically enabled after software update.

intopieces 12y ago

You're a technologically savvy person who keeps up with privacy news. At issue here is the precedent set: more and more devices by default transmit private information to third party servers without the knowledge of the users. Further, people who do not intend to be users (i.e., guests in a home with a SmartTV) suddenly are having their private information scooped up and stored without their consent. It requires a level of vigilance that not every person will have. Do I need to ask my host if they have a SmartTV with this function?

wdr1 12y ago

> So, disable it. I don't understand everybody's fascination with voice recognition. I don't find it more convenient at all. If you have small children, it's incredibly handy. Even with Chrome, it's much easier to sneak in a quick click of a button & then say my query than to try to type it all out.