BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK: "Smart" televisions

I do want one, but not if they're going to be used in ways more befitting of the NSA. And if you have one, watch what you say in your living room. Samsung's smart TV could be listening. And sharing. Voice recognition technology in the South Korean company's Internet connected TVs can capture and transmit nearby conversations. The potential for TVs to eavesdrop is revealed in Samsung's smart TV privacy policy available on its website. Quoting from said policy, "please be aware that if your spoken works include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured." Despite this, some people accept this as a necessary evil because for the voice command feature to work, third party software translates speech into text and sends the command back to the TV. Users can give commands to the TV's built-in microphone such as "find me an action movie," which causes the TV to search as instructed. This is not the first time that smart TVs sparked privacy concerns. In 2013, a user revealed that LG Electronics smart TV was sending information about his viewing habits back to the company without consent and without encrypting data. LG has also experimented with displaying targeted ads on its smart TVs, which requires collecting and utilizing user data, such as their location, age, and gender. Seriously, people, if you don't want your TV doing that to you, don't turn the microphone on unless absolutely necessary. And if you're using other people's televisions to spy on their conversations, STOP IT. That includes you, NSA.