According to Samsung, The Daily Beast, and BBC Technology News, if you control your Samsung Smart TV using the voice activation feature, then your TV set records what’s being said and might share this information with Samsung or a third party company named Nuance which specializes in voice recognition. Samsung’s privacy policy for Internet connected Smart TVs states that the television will be listening to people in the room to try to determine when commands are issued via the remote. It also states that if your spoken words include personal information that it will be among the data that’s captured and sent to Nuance.
Samsung says once the voice data is sent to Nuance, it searches for the requested content then sends that content back to the TV. Samsung says it takes consumer privacy very seriously and that they don’t retain the voice data they collect or sell the audio being captured. They also want consumers to know that they would always know if voice activation was turned on because the microphone icon would be visible on the screen.
My concern is that this technology could eventually be used to eavesdrop on people in the privacy of their homes. It might become something hackers exploit or maybe the FBI or CIA might use to keep tabs on various people they deem interesting for whatever reason.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31296188