What Is Weeping Angel? How To Stop Samsung TVs From Recording You Per WikiLeaks Latest Document Dump

Americans and techies around the world have long known that devices like Amazon’s “Echo”— or even many of Samsung’s televisions—could be listening to their private conversations. Turns out, it’s possible the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could have as well.

Part of WikiLeaks latest document dump Tuesday morning included the alleged revelation of a CIA hacking operation called “Weeping Angel,” a program that specifically used Samsung’s “smart” televisions as “covert listening devices,” The New York Times reported.

The newest disclosure from WikiLeaks contained more than 8,700 documents and, according to the site’s press release, directly came from former U.S. government contractors who were worried about the activities of the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, located in Langley, Virginia.

Though it sounds religious and perhaps innocent, “Weeping Angel” was supposedly developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch in tandem with the United Kingdom and homed in on Samsung TVs, according to WikiLeaks. The program supposedly puts a TV in “fake-off” mode, which would allow those at home to believe the device was off but it was not. Instead, it could still be used for “recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.”

However, the possibly nefarious capability of some of Samsung’s TVs was previously known. Back in 2015, it was reported that Samsung had included in its privacy policy that it could “capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features,” according to CNET.

But there is a way to make sure your Samsung won’t record you. According to CNET you can head to your television’s settings menu, choose “Smart Features” and then move down to the “Voice Recognition” feature and switch it off.