Samsung may still collect information about your usage of the SmartTV for the purposes described in this Samsung Privacy Policy. “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,” the policy states. 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 new Kinect is listening for a specific cue, like ‘Xbox on.’ We know our customers want and expect strong privacy protections to be built into our products, devices and services, and for companies to be responsible stewards of their data.
– Own a Samsung smart TV? Then take note: Your television is not only listening, it's sending your data to a third party, the Independent reports. The TV's voice-recognition software lets you give it orders, but the product's privacy policy warns that "personal or other sensitive information ... will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition." Samsung tells the BBC that the third party is Nuance, the company that does Samsung's speech-to-text conversion. But intellectual property lawyer Corynne McSherry says it would be nice to see that clarified in Samsung's policy, the Daily Beast reports. "And I’d definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form," she says. An activist tweets that Samsung's policy sounds a lot like the description of "telescreens" in George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984—which reads in part, "Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by [the screen]." Unnervingly, it wasn't clear how often "the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork." Samsung, however, says it doesn't keep voice data, and customers can opt to turn off voice-recognition or even unplug the TV from Wi-Fi. And Samsung isn't alone: the Verge reports that XBoxes already use voice recognition while being connected to the Internet. "Samsung's privacy policy is not unique; its rhetoric just happens to be similar to that of a well-known sci-fi novel," the Verge says.