A troubling sentence in Samsung's Smart TV security policy was pointed out by a Reddit user on Thursday and has sparked a debate over smart TV privacy and digital spying, reports Gizmodo.

The Samsung Smart TV privacy policy warns users not to discuss personal information in front of their TV, as seen in this excerpt from the privacy policy:

"You can control your Smart TV, and use many of its features, with voice commands. If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. 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."

In other words, if you turn on a favorite television program with only your voice, the TV will translate that voice command to text, and whatever else you may say in front of the device, and send the data to third-party companies.

Samsung is being accused by industry peers, consumers and tech websites of spying on its users and selling the data for profit. While no evidence of such data spying has been recorded, Samsung's privacy policy is considered exhibit A.

Many EFF activists took to Twitter to voice their concerns. The Independent tweeted, "Samsung's new privacy policy appears to have been taken from George Orwell's 1984," referring to the author's technological dystopian novel.

Defending its position, Samsung told The Daily Beast that "In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers' personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or use." The company said that customers can turn the feature off or disconnect the TV from WiFi

Tom's Guide points out that LG admitted its smart TVs spy on users in 2013.