People may be listening to your conversations. If you have a digital personal assistant (e.g. Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant), these are the things you need to know.
Digital personal assistants are great. They enable us to easily adjust the lights, set the temperature, and play our favorite songs.
At this point, they are integrated into our phones, audio equipment, household appliances, and even our cars. In speaking with them daily, many have humanized them and adopted them as part of the family.
As great as these devices are, people may be using them to listen to our conversations.
There are a few things that you need to know to keep your conversations confidential while continuing to enjoy the benefits of your digital personal assistant.
Digital Personal Assistants are Always Listening
It helps to understand a little about how digital personal assistants work.
Digital personal assistants are always listening to you, waiting for you to wake them up with a “wake word” such as “Hey Siri”, “Alexa”, or “Okay Google”.
Everything that you say after mentioning the wake word is recorded and sent to the company’s service cloud where it can be replayed.
Your recordings are used to improve the personal assistant’s understanding of the human voice through machine learning – essentially training the computer by making it take tests.
According to the manufacturers, the digital personal assistants only record after the wake word is spoken. However, digital personal assistants often start recording on their own from ambient or other noises.
This has led to the devices being the star witnesses of federal cases.
Image Credit: Jonny Lindner
Contractors and Employees Listen to Recordings
In April, it was identified that Amazon has a multinational team of tens of thousands of contractors and employees review the recordings to improve the digital personal assistant’s voice recognition.
The people listening to the recordings span from Boston to Romania.
Over the last few months, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have also identified that they have contractors review their recordings.
This brings some privacy concerns to light:
- Domestic and foreign employees and contractors may be listening to your conversations.
- Multiple people and organizations have access to your recordings.
- What these people do with these recordings is limited to their ethics, contractual terms, and their abidance of these terms.
This has resulted in privacy investigations in the EU with regulators and lawmakers in the US also considering the issue.
Apple identified as of August 28th that they have temporarily suspended their review program. Upon resuming, only Apple employees will be permitted to review the recordings.
Digital Personal Assistants Can Provide an Open Microphone
Have you ever noticed that your digital personal assistant lights up, but doesn’t make an audible noise? Or perhaps you’ve walked into an office and noticed that the personal assistant’s light indicator is on.
It’s very easy to open up a voice channel on the digital personal assistant enabling someone else to listen to and record your conversation. Here’s how to set up a call with Alexa for example.
It’s important to check and make sure that the digital personal assistant is not actively recording when discussing confidential matters.
On some of the digital personal assistants the wake word can be changed, and the notification can be silenced. It could start recording during your meeting without you knowing.
If you find one in an office, kindly ask the device’s owner to unplug the device.
I recommend that you take it one step further and do not use digital personal assistants at work.
Bad Actors Could Leverage Your Voice Recordings to Impersonate You
Do you remember the scene from Home Alone when Kevin McCallister uses the voice of “Johnny” to order the pizza?
Much the same as in the movie, but with much better technology, samples of your voice could be paired together by a bad actor to get access to your accounts, confidential information, or trade secrets.
This is the less likely case as it does require a higher level of effort.
In Summary
Digital personal assistants are a great asset that in some part makes our lives a little easier.
With that being said, it’s important to be conscientious of the fact that anything we say or do around these devices may be heard by others. These recordings may even be used in court.
Do I recommend that you stop using your digital personal assistant?
… and lose out on the creature comforts – No.
Use these three simple tips to keep you secure:
- Be conscientious that anything you say or do around your digital personal assistant may be listened to by others.
- Unplug or turn off digital personal assistants when discussing confidential matters.
- Do not use a digital personal assistant for work.
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