How Well Do Your Smart Speakers Know You?
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- As smart speakers like the Google Home and the Amazon Echo make their way into more homes, experts advise users understand what information they share with the companies, and how to control their own privacy.
The speakers, by default, listen to everything. However they each wait for their "wake word" before hitting record, which can be muted by pressing the microphone button on the device itself. Users would have to press the button again in order to use the speaker.
When users activate the speakers, the little recording snippets get sent and sorted into a cloud, and the information from it gets pulled and used to improve the service, or for advertising.
From a cybersecurity standpoint, both Google and Amazon say they take user information very seriously and each have advanced steps to protect it. When it comes to privacy, those default settings are a little looser because they have so much to gain from gathering data. Users may have something to gain too, if they welcome targeted ads.
"It's harder to be anonymous in a sense these days," said FR Secure's Chief Security Analyst Chad Spoden. "There's a certain aspect that some people just want to hang on to, and I'm probably one of those that just doesn't want to share that information as much, and there's other people who do and that's OK. The biggest thing is just that you're aware."
Both Google and Amazon let you see, hear, and delete any of your recordings through their privacy settings. Log on to each of those accounts and click these links:
