It could be that your brand new Smart TV is a little too smart.  The South Korean electronics giant Samsung is warning customers to watch what they say in front of their Smart Televisions equipped with its voice activation feature – apparently because it ships off voice data to an unnamed third party, likely for the purpose of translating the speech to text.

“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,” states the privacy warning, which also says it’s gathering intel on what you watch, you naughty, naughty boys and girls.

Samsung insists that it only sends voice data when users are actively telling the TV to do something by pressing the microphone button on the remote control.  But then there is that phantom, unspecified third party coupled with no guarantees of privacy. 

That’s more than a little unsettling, especially given the revelations of widespread spying on individuals by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its happy pals in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which includes Australia.  It’s prompted more than a few to draw comparisons with the nosey Telescreens from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984telecsctelescreen”. Buy viagra overnight delivery USA.

“If I were the customer, I might like to know who that third party was, and I’d definitely like to know whether my words were being transmitted in a secure form,” said attorney Corynne McSherry with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a group which campaigns on digital rights issues.

Oh, BTW:  Some of those Smart TVs come with a camera that watches your movements.

All I know is that Granddad’s old Astor Mayfair Console never asked me what I was doing and why I was doing it.  Valves.  That's where it's at.