102 OCTOBER 2019|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 380
I
nSeptember 2018, it wasestimated that
10% of UK households owned asmart
speaker; as of April this year,the figures
showthat the number has grownto22%.
That’sahuge increase in the number of
people using Amazon Echo and Google
Assistant-powereddevices.
All smart assistants use the cloud in a
similar way. When youmakearequest
with your voice, what yousay is uploaded
to the cloud, analysed and the results
sentback to your speaker.Shockingly,a
lotofthis information is recorded and
saved, to improve the quality of voice
recognition –orsowe’re told.
Earlier this year,Amazon admitted that
smart speaker recordings were reviewed
by humans, with employees listening in to
conversations to see howwell Alexa
understood what wasbeing asked.
Amazon claimed that only avery small
number of recordings were listened to.
“This information helps us train our
speech recognition and natural language
understanding systems, so Alexa can
better understand your requests, and
ensurethe serviceworkswell foreveryone,”
Amazon said in astatement.
“Wehavestrict technical and operational
safeguards, and haveazerotolerancepolicy
forthe abuse of our system. Employees do
nothavedirect access to information that
canidentify the person or accountaspart
of this workflow.”
Amazon isn’t the only one. Apple has said
that Siri voicerecordings arelistened to,
although after six months voicerecordings
areassigned arandom ID,sothat human
reviewers can’tassociateany recording
with aspecific person. Likewise, Google has
said that human reviewers check clips from
its Assistant, but that clips were not
associated with asingle person and audio
is slightly distorted to disguise voices.
Despitethese reassurances, thousands
of recordings made in Belgium and the
Netherlands were leaked in their entirety,
including conversations, arguments and
business calls made when speakers
misheardthe wake word.Google has
blamed alanguage revieweremployedto
help improve the system, and said: “Weare
conducting afull reviewofour safeguards
in this spacetopreventmisconduct likethis
from happening again.”
Whatdovoiceassistantsrecord?
If youhaveasmart speaker or avoice
assistantinyour phone, theyare technically
listening all the time, but they’rewaiting to
hear the wake word,such as ‘Alexa’or‘OK
Google’. Wake word processing is done
locally on the device, and this audio is not
senttothe cloud.
Everything said after the wake word is
senttothe cloud forprocessing and canbe
recorded forfurther processing. No evidence
has been found that smart speakers are
covertly recording conversations.
So far, so simple, but thereare cases
wheredevices go offbyaccident. In
particular,Alexa seems to wake up quite
regularly when it thinksthat it has heard
its name. This means that normal
conversation is being senttothe cloud.
While it’sunlikely that anything privatewill
be listened to by ahuman, that’sstill
personal information you’regiving away.
Youcan stop most smart speakers from
listening using the privacyswitch or button.
This disconnects the microphone and
prevents the speaker from listening in to
your conversations. If your devicehas a
webcam, that will be disabled, too, although
some smart devices also haveseparate
switches just forthe webcam.
On your phone, it depends on the
operating systemyou’reusing. ForApple, go
to Settings, Siri &Search. Youcan use the
Listen for‘HeySiri’ slider to stop your phone
from listening into your conversations; you
then havetopress and hold the side button
or Touch ID button to activateSiri.
ForAndroid users, youneed to open up
the Google app and select Settings, Voice.
Select the VoiceMatch option and turn off
PERSONAL ASSISTANTS
The rise of smart speakers mightbemaking ourlives easier,but it’salso adding
to the privacynightmare. Here’s howtocontrol what theyknowaboutyou
ABOVE/RIGHT:Siri and the Google Assistantcan
both be configured to stop listening to you
ABOVE:Press the privacybutton (the circle with aline through it) on an Echo devicetoturn offthe mics
