WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Washington-based watchdog group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a federal complaint against Samsung in response to the company’s alleged recording of private consumer conversations, the group said in a statement.
“EPIC has filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about Samsung's SmartTvs,” the statement said. “Samsung routinely intercepts and records the private communications of consumers in their homes.”
Samsung faced criticism when it recently announced a change to its privacy policy that implied the company shares secretly-recorded conversations with third parties.
“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,” the revised privacy policy said, according to The New York Times.
Telecommunications companies have faced mounting public scrutiny following revelations that intelligence agencies collect their customers’ data. Networks of the world’s largest SIM cards manufacturer Gemalto were hacked by the US and UK spies, as revealed recently in documents provided by US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
