Gadgetory

our greatest fears are coming true companies are testing pop-up television ads I'm Bridget Carey and this is you're seen that updating it's been a bad week for Samsung not only is the company dealing with concerns of its Smart TVs listening in on conversations but now there are complaints that the Smart TV itself will show you pop-up ads when you're watching a movie some owners noticed a silent ad for Pepsi interrupted streaming video when using two apps one is Plex which is software that lets you stream videos stored on your computer the other is Foxtel Play that's an app that installed on some of Samsung's Australian televisions Samsung apologized and says the problem has been fixed but this little glitch doesn't come out of nowhere Samsung has been working with Yahoo to create TV pop-up ads and it all complicates consumer fears of Samsung's spying on living room conversations by sending voice command recordings to third parties Samsung clarified that the third-party is the software company nuance which converts spoken commands into text let's hope that third party doesn't someday become an advertiser and this wouldn't have blown up if Samsung was more transparent in the first place about what it does with voice data in fact we could use more transparency about data collection in all sorts of areas like cars a US Senate report released this week found that automakers are constantly gathering information about drivers using on-board location tracking systems that includes where the car has traveled and how long it is parked companies are storing that with outside data centers sometimes with little protection the report also highlighted a lack of strong cybersecurity policies to protect drivers from hacking attacks and speaking of hacking the White House is creating a new cybersecurity agency to track cyber threats and attacks it's designed to share intelligence from various departments to better crack down on cyber terrorism and espionage President Obama made cybersecurity a top priority after the crippling attack on Sony Pictures and the multiple hacks on retailers and tech companies last year don't forget 80 million people now have to worry about fraud after security numbers and other personal data was stolen from health insurance provider anthem and that data by the way was not encrypted but here's some good news at least when it comes to physical world computer crimes the number of stolen smartphones has declined in three major cities since phones started coming with kill switches the number of stolen iPhones dropped by 25 percent in New York by 40% in San Francisco and 50% in London and that's over the past year since Apple added activation lock to iPhones if your phone is stolen you can prevent it from being reused there by discouraging thieves who want to resell it that's your tech news update there's always more at cnet.com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey