Voice
assistants are making our lives easier day by day. Instead of having to get up
to turn on the lights, open the doors, draw the curtains, switch on the AC’s, or
tomake that call while driving we can simply ask them to do it for us. Not only
that, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or IphoneSiri allow you to call and search
businesses, services,answer mails via voice too, with no need to input a phone
number or text anywhere. We all read the news recently as reported Bloomberg in
April that human reviewers listened to Amazon Alexa recordings. The news came
as shock to many users like me as well. A lot of people got worried that voice
assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri or the Google Assistant are spying
on us at home. All three companies have said the assistants are not listening
all the time, but only listen for a wake word — or perhaps hidden commands humans
can’t hear.
The
worry is why do tech companies want to hold on to information from our homes at
first placef? Is it because no one stopping them and theymight be using this
data for training purposes. When asked, “Any data that is saved is used to improve
Siri,” Apple said.“Alexa is always getting smarter, which is only possible by
training her with voice recordings to better understand requests, provide more
accurate responses, and personalize the customer experience,” Beatrice
Geoffrin, director of Alexa privacy, said in a statement. The recordings also
help Alexa learn different accents and understand queries about recurring
events happening around us, she said. Surely we all want to benefit from AI
that can set a timer or save energy when we don’t need the lights on. But that
doesn’t mean we’re also opening our homes to tech companies as a lucrative
source of data to train their algorithms and one day in any big breach for
fault of ours maybe we lose all this data in the wrong hands. This data should
belong to us.
Another
security issue has come in light for these leading voice assistants—and this
time it isn't manufacturers recording our conversations. A new scam has been
exposed, where fraudsters are hiding behind convenient auto-dial features to lure
unsuspecting users into a trap. What we do now days is blindly trust these
Voice Assistants for searching random businesses though internet and call on
these unknown numbers without verifying the authenticity of service provider. The
fraudsters have realized that people search for businesses and then call them,
all without viewing the online entry for the business itself. And that has
opened up a major risk that those businesses are not what they might
seem.According to the Better Business Bureau, a private, nonprofit organization
in USA since 1912 some scammers have apparently gamed Google and Amazon's phone
number ranking systems. Unsuspecting users could end up talking to an imposter
instead of the desired business.
As
reported by BBB in a latest survey that consumers reached out to it after
almost falling for scammers who tried to charge them nonsense fees. One such
victim used some form of voice search to call an airline in the hope of
changing her seat. A con artist then tried to make her pay $400 in pre-paid
gift cards for the service, but luckily, she didn't fall for the trick. Another
customer used Siri to contact support for his printer, only to find himself
connected to a scammer.
Not
only that Every kind of home or office appliance now a days is also becoming a
data-collection device. According to the data, the average US household
contains 17 smart devices while European homes have an average of 14 devices
connected to the network.(source
Cybersecurity in an IoT and mobile world (ZDNet special report) |
Download the report as a PDF (TechRepublic). All these gadgets are supported by
Alexa or Siri. Amazon acknowledges it collects data about third-party devices
even when you don’t use Alexa to operate them. It says Alexa needs to know the
“state” of your devices “to enable a great smart home experience.” But keeping
a record of this data is more useful to them than to us. Amazon could delete
everything it had learned about our home, but we can’t look at it or stop
Amazon from continuing to collect it. Google Assistant also collects data about
the state of connected devices. But the company says it doesn’t store the
history of these devices, even though there doesn’t seem to be much stopping
it.One more fear prevailing many of us due to this iscould a hacker tap into
one or all of these devices and eavesdrop on us? The official answer is no, and
specific technical reasons are cited. However, as quoted by The Palmer Group
several theses for 2017 including, "Anything that can be hacked will be
hacked." Anyone who believes otherwise is simply naïve. One such hacking
was recently reported by a couple too ,
Siri
or Alexa is NOT dangerous. The data it collects is NOT dangerous. Nothing about
an Amazon Echo is dangerous. But who does what with our data is shivering
thought.In today date n time, Data is more powerful than the being itself. It
is an immutable law of 21st-century living, which in this case means that the
most serious threat to each of us is the profile that can be created with the
willing suspension of our agency. Most of us have no idea how much information
about us all is available for sale. The willing suspension of agency has the
potential to take us right up to the line that separates where we are now from
an Orwellian future. (Many people believe we already live in a surveillance
state. We'll explore this in another article.)We Must Deal with This Sooner or
Later.
Just
before winding up this article I searched for home automation with Alexaon amazon.in
and it showed me 1000 results found in Home Improvement, Home & Kitchen,
Books and Electronics department with huge Diwali offers. Not only that Amazon
on Wednesday September 25, 2019 during
the new hardware launch of its Alexa enabled device launched Amazon Loop ,
Amazon Frames , Echo Buds, General Motors Alexa Integration, Amazon Smart Oven,
The Ring Indoor Camand many more. It was rightly said by Blake Kozak, an IHS
Markit smart home analyst,
"Consumers who were on the fence before, they may stay away,"
Kozak said about users' reactions to this year's privacy issues. "But
consumers that use these devices won't throw them away."
The
world will be a very different place when Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and
other AI-empowered players have assembled first-party profile data that
includes our agency. It will make what they do with our current behavioral
profiles look like primitive data processing.We are predisposed to pay for
convenience. We happily do it with cash and with data every day. However, we
should not suspend our judgment about the implausibility of this narrative for
convenience or for the quality of our enjoyment. Though this is a story we have
been told before, there are no conventions of this medium. So let me be the
first to scream: "Look out!"
Dr. Harsha Ratnani
Associate Professor
Department of IT
