Welcome Home, Big Brother is Listening
We are living in a world where electronics know more about us then we do. Whilst sometimes convenient, it leaves many of us questioning our privacy and security. I for one get triggered whenever I hear my sister’s Siri, via her iPad, randomly start spitting out search results after random phrases get thrown around the house. Trust me, this has happened on several occasions and it makes me wonder how much our devices are listening to.
During the last few years, many people have been welcoming digital home assistants into their homes. They are easily accessible to consumers from a large range of electronic outlets and can be purchased from $40 onwards. A few of the most common ones include Google Home and Amazon Echo. These devices are smart speakers that connect to the home internet of consumers. They respond to commands of people within their homes. Recent models have built in cameras and record and store conversations.
Last year, an Amazon Echo device became the subject to media scrutiny. The digital home assistant recorded a woman’s private conversation with her husband and sent it to his work colleague. Amazon was quick to respond to the claim stating, that the device mistook a word in the conversation as “Alexa” to which it soon heard words sounding like “send message.” The device then sent the conversation to a work colleague after it responded to what sounded like a name from the contact list within the device. However, this isn’t the first time that one of these devices have caused people to question their privacy and security within their own home.
Although, described as a matter of “human error,” a case in Germany caught the attention of media outlets in recent months. A customer requested a copy of their recordings with their Alexa. 1,700 recordings from a stranger were then sent to him by mistake as Reuters reports.
As if that isn’t frightening enough, multiple reports from Echo users have arisen regarding unprompted laughter from their Alexa’s. This causes people to question how much their machine listens to. These cases leave many concerned as to whether their homes are really a place of privacy so long as they have one of these digital technologies installed.
A study of security and privacy issues associated with the Amazon Echo accessed the vulnerabilities of these technologies. The main concerns included; machines always listening to and recording conversations, whilst waiting for wake words. In addition to; hacking, the cameras installed in devices watching consumers as well as susceptibilites of excessive information in cloud storage.
A Forbes article by Tony Bradley outlined an interesting concern regarding these technologies. When setting up the device to “always on,” it, “is essentially like inviting Big Brother into your home.” Bradley also mentioned that there have been instances where hackers have taken control of baby monitors. One event covered by KidSpot outlined a mother’s scary encounter after she discovered a hacker had been watching her breastfeed her child:
Whilst individualised profiles of consumers may be convenient, it can also be concerning. These technologies know a lot of information about their customers. As we’ve learnt from some of the presented cases, information has the potential to be disclosed and can potentially be dangerous. Furthermore, the authors of the research state that the “home is no longer a private closed environment.” This statement is echoed by the concerns of Tony Bradley in his article in Forbes.
So, the next time you consider installing one of these devices in your home, perhaps think about your privacy. These ‘convenient’ little digital assistants may be ‘conveniently’ spying on your habits and compromising your security in your own home. If you do own one of these machines, perhaps you may want to be limiting how much time you have them turned on and recording your everyday lives.
