Flaw lets anyone at door listen to what you are talking near Samsung fridge

Talking of smart technology, Samsung has a lot to offer. Samsung Family Hub, as some of you may already know, is the company’s Bixby-powered smart-refrigerator with a connected touchscreen to enhance the modern day phenomena of smart home.

As part of Family Hub’s promotional offers, Samsung gave for free the Ring Video Doorbells, which is a combination of traditional doorbell as well as a camera and microphone. So this whole ecosystem – integration of Ring Video Doorbell with Samsung Family Hub – lets you see (as well as answer) the person at your door through the fridge’s display.

It’s worth mentioning that the Ring Doorbell + Family Hub users get to access two features – one is to see and/answer through the fridge’s display when the bell rings, and the other is to receive motion alerts on the display whenever the doorbell senses any movement at your door.

Voice interaction with guest at the door, needless to say, is handled by microphones/speakers at both ends. However, unlike video display, which gets enabled automatically, Family Hub users need to turn on microphones/speakers explicitly.

This makes sense, as you’d only want your guest at the door to hear you when you actually want to talk to them. Except that this is not happening.

Reports are pouring in that microphones/speakers at both ends (doorbell and Family Hub) are getting turned on when someone is at the door, which means they can listen to whatever is being spoken in the vicinity of your fridge’s mic. Just think of the sheer mess and threat to your security/privacy this could create.

Users complaints

Use-cases vary, but the common theme is microphones/speakers getting activated automatically. Take a look at how a couple of affected users word the problem:

Since the update the Ring app automatically answers all motion alerts. This is extremely annoying. When I’m walking out of the house the fridge answers the motion and I can hear everything in my house through the camera out side my house this is a major security issue!!!

I’m having the same problem. The latest update messed up the way Ring is integrated – it registers motion alerts as doorbell rings, and then automatically launches the app on the Family Hub display. Also, when doorbell rings, it automatically launches the Ring app and starts the microphone on my refrigerator (and mic sound is therefore broadcasted on the Ring hardware at my door)!! THIS POSES SAFETY / PRIVACY CONCERNS AND MUST BE FIXED IMMEDIATELY!!

Despite the limited number of reports, the matter has recently been escalated, as confirmed by one of the Samsung moderators on the company’s official help forum recently.

We hope Samsung resolves the problem (wherever it lies) before it starts being more widely reported.

Moving on, we have a good news as well.

Photo slide screensaver coming back

For over a month now, Family Hub 3 users have been complaining of missing screensavers option, through which one could set a slide show of their pictures on the Family Hub refrigerator’s screen.

While the matter was escalated two weeks back, what’s now coming to light is that Samsung will be bringing back the feature in an update coming this month. The confirmation came from Samsung while answering a couple of users on Family Hub app’s Play listing page saying:

Photo slide Screensaver is not applied on recent update We will provide the photo slide show feature on 15th of May update thank you.

So those of you missing the Photo slide screensaver feature on your Family Hub refrigerator’s display, can expect to have it back with the roll out of the promised update (on May 15).

Stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) to hear about all related developments as and when they occur