Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri might be eavesdropping more often than you think

Your smart home speaker listens to a lot of your private conversations than it should. While you may be aware that se virtual assistants have been programmed in a way that y listen for ir wake phrase. But sometimes mishear things and reby get activated, ending up listening to stuff that wasn't really meant for m.

According to a research carried out rastern University and Imperial College London researchers, it has been found that some smart speakers powered by super-intelligent voice assistants, such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and Cortana, can accidentally activate as many as 19 times during a day and record close to 43 seconds of your conversations every time.

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How was research conducted?

research was conducted by simulating real-world conditions that saw researchers play 125 hours of audio from several Netflix shows. By recording video feeds of speakers to find out if ir lights were activated, and by monitoring network to see if re has been any traffic that was going back to cloud, it was determined when smart speakers were actually recording.

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Here's what researchers found

It was reported that smart speakers, including Google Home Mini, Apple HomePod, Amazon Echo Dot, and Harman Kardon Invoke, got routinely activated by mishearing words and would activate up to 19 times each day on aver, reby earwigging up to 20 to 43 seconds every time.

Apple HomePod was reportedly worst culprit of m all, as it switched on to a lot of phrases. Speech that started with a 'Hi' or 'Hey', followed by something that sounded like an 'S' and a vowel, or something that sounded like a 'ri' were a few of mistaken detected. Amazon’s Echo Dot 3 mistakenly woke up least times during study, whereas, Alexa was activated by phrase 'my pants on'.

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Do smart speakers listen to personal conversations?

Every show caused at least one of devices to activate, while most shows woke up multiple devices, although results were mostly inconsistent. research was carried out with each device for 12 times, except for Harman Kardon speaker -- with just four tests. However, researchers also stated that re was evidence to suggest that smart speakers were constantly listening to ir conversations and activated only when y detected a perceived wake word.

solution

If you are concerned about accidentally activating your smart speaker, you should kw that re are certain models that come with a feature that allows you to mute ir inbuilt microphones.

Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Nest speakers give users ability to do so using a dedicated mute button, while re are many smart displays that feature a physical camera slider to block camera from recording. 

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Im credits: Amazon | Apple | Google