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How to stop Samsung’s smart TVs from spying on you

Published Feb 11th, 2015 11:35AM EST
How To Stop Samsung Smart TV Spying

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Last week, we told you about just how scary Samsung’s smart TV privacy policy was. One quote from Samsung’s terms and conditions says it all: “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.” Yikes.

Samsung has since responded twice to the uproar surrounding its privacy policy, explaining that the aforementioned statement is a precaution intended to cover a scenario that is highly unlikely to occur.

All the same, however, it can occur — but there’s an easy way to make sure that it’s impossible for your Samsung smart TV to accidentally spy on you.

DON’T MISS: It looks like Samsung found yet another way to copy Apple in the Galaxy S6

It is widely known that Samsung’s HDTVs have some of the best displays in the business. In fact, Samsung’s TV display knowhow is what led to Samsung’s industry-leading smartphone and tablet displays. But people overly concerned with privacy might have trouble pulling the trigger on a Samsung TV after all of the recent attention the company’s privacy policy has drawn.

Luckily, however, there’s an incredibly easy way to make absolutely certain that your Samsung smart TV never spies on you.

Here’s a step by step guide:

  1. Press the menu button on your remote and access the Settings menu
  2. Scroll to Smart Features and press select
  3. Then scroll down until you reach Voice Recognition and disable that setting

Voila! Your TV can no longer listen in on your conversations — intentionally or accidentally. Of course, this will disable all of your voice control functionality, but truth be told, it doesn’t work very well on many models anyway.

Now, the only real problem you’ll have to deal with on your gorgeous Samsung smart TV is the horribly annoying pop-up ads.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.