Unwrapping your smart home device
Happy New Year! Congratulations, your family grew by a smart home device. It plays your music, tells you what the weather will be like, and even recites stories to your children. whether you are thinking of buying one this year, or have been using a smart home device for years, here are a few things you should know:
How does a home assistant work?
Whether you speak with Alexa (Amazon), Siri (Apple) or Google Assistant, when the “wake words” are used, the recording begins, eg. “Hi Alexa”. Questions, statements and instructions are sent to the US and the main artificial intelligence system sends back an answer or provides direction such as reading something from the internet, checking your calendar, playing your music. That processing doesn’t happen on your home device, it happens on a computer in a large Apple, Amazon or Google warehouse.
Your recordings are being stored for the foreseeable future. You can review and delete your stored recordings at Myactivity.google.com if you are using a Google smart device, or under privacy settings in an online browser for your Alexa device. Unless you delete the audio and/or video recordings, they will be stored for an undetermined length of time.
2. What happens to the recordings?
We know for sure that a few things happen:
People listen to them. Employees listen to the recordings who work for the tech giants or any third party contractors they engage. For quality and testing, real people are likely to listen to your conversations with your smart home device to make sure the algorithms and artificial intelligence systems gave you the right answer. Apple (Siri) is the only company to have “human review” turned off by default. You can turn this off in your settings.
To be the best digital assistant possible, the algorithms amass a comprehensive view of who the individuals in your household are. What everyone’s voice sounds like. If you have pets. Preferences, language use, slang, likes and dislikes. They will know who visits your house, how often, and based on learning your voice, they will know which friends’ and relatives’ houses you visit (who have a smart home device).
Video devices take it a step further, Facebook tells us that their Portal device and camera specifically tracks how many people are in view of the camera, where they are in relation to the camera and other “environmental data”. In Illinois, there is a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, accusing them of using facial recognition without users’ consent.
What else may happen?
There are some interesting news stories where journalists listened back through their recordings, and found recordings that started without “wake words” being used and recordings of background conversations that were correctly but unintentionally recorded. These included financial information and health information.
Amazon, Facebook and/or Apple are building an extremely rich profile of you and all members of your family. This will almost certainly be used for targeting advertising to you across your devices.
Recordings may be used in court in the future. In the US a judge ordered Amazon produce Alexa recordings in a murder investigation.
3. What can I do to protect my privacy while still getting the benefits of the device?
Image used with permission from www.cartooncollection.com.
Turn off “human review” from your Google, Facebook or Amazon device. This ensures actual people don’t listen to your commands and conversations.
Periodically manually review and delete the audio and video recordings taken in your home. Search the internet for how to do this with your device if it’s not immediately apparent.
If you are having a conversation that you do not wish to be recorded, unplug your device temporarily.
Keep in mind that your other devices might be behaving in the same way as a smart home assistant. These include smartphones (is Siri turned on?), smart thermostats and smart stereo systems.
If you find that you are not using the device on a daily basis, unplug it until you next need to use it.
There’s no doubt that there are benefits to having a smart home device, or using a digital home assistant. I recommend understanding and having oversight over sensitive information like voice and video recordings. It’s important to understand that, while you are benefiting from the amazing services available through your new device, you are also providing value to these companies through data, advertising revenue, and in knowing you and your family more intimately than any company has before.