Samsung criticized for inserting Pepsi ads into smart TVs

Samsung's smart TV products - Samsung smart TV - have really become the center of harsh criticism this week due to a serious security policy loophole that allows this device to be exploited to eavesdrop on the owner's conversations and most recently, automatically insert advertisements without permission into viewers' content.

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Can be eavesdropped if Voice Recognition is enabled

Last week, Samsung released a privacy policy for its smart TV line, which reads: "Please note that if your speech includes sensitive or other personal information, that information will be recorded and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition."

The words in Samsung's security message above have caused trouble for users of the voice control feature on smart TVs.

Even on social networks, some users have compared Samsung's privacy policy to a description of a technology that tracks people through screens in the famous fantasy work "1984" by writer George Orwell.

Concerns about the risk of eavesdropping through Samsung Smart TVs have caused Samsung to receive a lot of criticism from customers and forced the company to change the content of its privacy policy with words that reduce the risk from Voice Recognition vulnerabilities and explain more clearly how this function works.

In a blog post titled “Samsung Smart TVs Don’t Monitor Living Room Conversations,” Samsung said its smart TVs have two microphones. One is inside the TV and the other is inside the remote control.

The mechanism of these two microphones works "like most any other speech recognition service available on other products including smartphones and tablets."

Samsung also claims that it uses industry-standard encryption to secure data.

However, even though Samsung has toned down and removed sensitive words in the privacy policy and also committed to protecting users' personal data, all of this still does not reassure consumers and the safest thing for them to do now is to disable the Voice Recognition function on the TV.

Annoyed with "tactless" commercials

While the privacy policy issue has yet to be resolved, on February 11, technology news sites continued to report allegations from users who said they were annoyed by ads being inserted into TV content every "20-30 minutes."

A series of online complaints from customers using third-party video apps such as Plex and the Foxtel service, complained that Pepsi ads appeared suddenly as pop-ups, interrupting their TV viewing.

"After about 15 minutes of watching TV, the screen goes blank, and then a Pepsi commercial pops up in a 16:9 aspect ratio (taking up about half the screen)," one Samsung smart TV owner wrote on Foxtel's support forum.

This is not the first time Samsung has been complained about for "inappropriate" advertisements that interrupt users' TV viewing programs.

In January, after a customer posted a photo of pop-up ads for the “Yahoo Broadcast interactive” app appearing on his smart TV, Samsung explained that these types of ads originated from its partner Yahoo and that Samsung was working with Yahoo to improve the system.

However, despite the earlier complaints it appears that similar Yahoo programs may also be to blame for the new ad intrusion.

Samsung has yet to respond to the latest annoying advertising incident on the platform.

According to Vietnam+