• Hacking Your Samsung Smart Tv

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Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

Why worry about Big Brother?

It's your big Samsung TV that's watching you. Oh, and listening to you.

That seems to be the conclusion from reading the privacy small print offered by the company. (Samsung's motto: TV has never been this smart.)

It concerns the voice-recognition feature, vital for everyone who finds pressing a few buttons on their remote far too tiresome.

The wording, first spotted by the Daily Beast, first informs you that the company may 'capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features.'

This is almost understandable. It's a little like every single customer service call, supposedly recorded to make your next customer service call far, far more enjoyable.

However, the following words border on the numbing: '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.'

We are NOT having your mother here this weekend, next weekend or ANY weekend!

I'm pregnant and it's not yours.

The possibilities curdle in the mind. So much so that I have contacted Samsung to ask how broad this policy might be and what third parties might be informed of your personal conversations. (I would have just shouted at my SmartTV to get comment, but it isn't a Samsung.)

A Samsung spokeswoman told me: 'Samsung takes consumer privacy very seriously. In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers' personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or use.'

But what might be authorized and by whom?

Samsung's spokeswoman continued: ' Should consumers enable the voice recognition capability, the voice data consists of TV commands, or search sentences, only. Users can easily recognize if the voice recognition feature is activated because a microphone icon appears on the screen.'

Yes, we must now look for little microphone icons to check whether we're being listened to.

As for the third parties mentioned in the privacy policy, Samsung explained it to me like this: 'Samsung does not retain voice data or sell it to third parties. If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice command search. At that time, the voice data is sent to a server, which searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV.'

One imagines this is simply one more small step for mankind toward ultimate electronic envelopment, which some see as a very good thing.

Your Nest and other devices will, of course, capture so many of your domestic predilections too. This is about making the Internet of Things merely one more thing in making your life easier, lazier and seemingly less private.

Clearly, this isn't the only option for those intent on a SmartTV. You can disable the full panoply and stick to a series of already-defined voice commands. However, this still brings with it stipulations such as 'While Samsung will not collect your spoken word, Samsung may still collect associated texts and other usage data so that we can evaluate the performance of the feature and improve it.'

Alright, you cry, I'll switch voice-recognition data off altogether. This will result in '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.'

As Samsung's spokesperson explained to me: 'Voice recognition, which allows the user to control the TV using voice commands, is a Samsung Smart TV feature, which can be activated or deactivated by the user. The TV owner can also disconnect the TV from the Wi-Fi network.'

You might imagine that other SmartTV manufacturers would have similar controls and stipulations. If a product can listen and record something, it's likely it will.

So I went to Philips SmartTVs and could only find a general privacy notice, with no specific information relating to SmartTVs. LG's privacy policy again is general, with no apparent specific information relating to SmartTVs and their potential.

I have contacted both companies to ask whether there is a more detailed supplement that makes their TVs capabilities clear.

LG was, however, embroiled in a privacy controversy in 2013, when its SmartTVs were accused of knowing too much. The company promised to change its policies.

At the heart of all this is, of course, trust. The best and only defense against intrusion from the likes of Google to Samsung is this: 'We don't really care about your private life. We just want your data, so that we can make money from it.'

It's inevitable that the more data that we put out, the more will be recorded and the more will be known about us by machines which are in the charge of people.

We have all agreed to this. We click on 'I agree' with no thought of consequences, only of our convenience.

It isn't just your TV that will listen and record. Soon, it'll be everything that has a digital connection.

This is our digital bed. We lie in it willingly.

3:35 p.m PT: Updated with comment from Samsung

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There’s a good chance your smart TV is spying on you. Smart TVs often analyze the videos you’re watching and report back — whether you’re watching live TV, streaming videos on a service like Netflix, or playing local video files. Worse yet, this can be a security problem.

TVs should really just be dumb displays. Smart TVs not only have bad interfaces, they spy on what you’re watching even when you aren’t using those smarts. Their security practices are often pretty bad, too.

The Problem

RELATED:Smart TVs Are Stupid: Why You Don’t Really Want a Smart TV

Modern smart TVs often have “features” that inspect what you’re watching and report it back to some company’s servers. This data can be sold to marketers, or it could be tied to you somehow to create a better ad-targeting profile. Really, you’re not getting anything out of this — the TV manufacturer just makes some more money with this data. Vizio just made headlines because such a feature is enabled by default on Vizio smart TVs.

This tracking doesn’t just apply to the smart TV’s apps — even if you plug in a Roku or Apple TV and stream something from Netflix, the TV can analyze the picture it’s displaying and report that data back. It may report back on the channel number you’re watching if you’re watching live TV, or the filenames of local video files on a USB drive plugged into your smart TV.

Smart TVs also have questionable security protections. Vizio TVs transmitted this tracking data without any encryption, so other people can snoop on the snooping. They also connect to a server without checking it’s a legitimate server, so a man-in-the-middle attack could send commands back to the TV.

Vizio says it’s fixed this problem and TVs will automatically update to a new firmware. But are those smart TVs even checking to ensure they’re downloading legitimate firmware files with correct digital signatures? Based on TV manufacturers’ cavalier attitude to security in general, we’re concerned.

Some smart TVs have built-in cameras and microphones — if the security is so shoddy in general, it would theoretically be possible for an attacker to spy on you through your TV.

Hacking Your Samsung Smart Tv

Just Don’t Connect Your TV to Wi-Fi or Ethernet

Just don’t connect your smart TV to your home network and you’ll be protected from whatever built-in spying features it has and any security vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

Don’t connect your smart TV to your Wi-Fi network. If you have, go into your smart TV’s settings and disconnect it from the Wi-Fi. Don’t connect it to the network with an Ethernet cable, either. If you’ve already connected to the Wi-Fi network, try to get your smart TV to forget the password. If you can’t, you may need to reset it to its factory default settings — don’t give it the Wi-Fi password when you set it up again.

This will also prevent your smart TV from embedding extra advertisements into other things you watch — yes, some Samsung smart TVs actually do that!

Get “smarts” on your TV by plugging in a streaming box like an Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV, video game console, or one of the many other devices that works better and should be more secure than your smart TV. That box can be connected to the Internet.

Try to Disable the Spying Features (Not Recommended)

We recommend you just disconnect your smart TV from the network and be done with it. If it can’t connect to the Internet, it can’t cause you any problems — full stop. You won’t want to use its smart features when you can just use a superior streaming device, anyway.

If you do want to leave it connected to the network, you could try to disable the spying features. This will be a different process on different models of TVs.

Worse yet, just toggling the option may not do anything. Even if you don’t agree to Vizio’s privacy policy when setting up the TV, Vizio still enables the snooping features on your TV. Disabling the spying features may also not prevent the TV from being exploited through its security holes. New spying features could be automatically added in firmware updates.

If you really want to disable the spying features instead, you’ll find them somewhere in your TV’s settings menu. On Vizio TVs, this setting is named “Smart Interactivity” and it may be buried under System > Reset & Admin. Here are Vizio’s instructions for disabling it.

LG smart TVs may have a “Collection of watching info” setting. On some Samsung smart TVs, you can head into a “Smart Features” menu and disable “Voice recognition” to disable always-listening voice commands. Other smart TVs from other manufacturers may have many different settings named different things from model to model.

This is part of a larger problem with “the Internet of things,” which envisions modern appliances — everything from your toaster to the blender, microwave, and fridge — becoming “smart” and connecting to the network. As we’ve seen with Android smartphones, most device manufacturers don’t seem capable of creating secure software and updating it. Smart appliances sound alright, but the reality — spying and security holes — seems like a serious problem.