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Beware of Eavesdropping Smart Speakers

October 11, 2017

Personal Digital Assistants (e.g. Siri, Alexa, Google Home, etc.) are smart speakers that connect to the Internet and respond to spoken words. It's a great way to find out the weather, traffic conditions, sports scores and even the current value of bitcoin. We've written and presented about the security and capabilities of these marvelous devices. The devices themselves (except for smartphones) hold very little data. Alexa is the clear winner when it comes to the current line of digital assistants. It captures data when the wake word is spoken and transmits it to Amazon for analysis and action. According to a report in The Verge, some Google Home Mini devices pretty much send everything they hear to Google. Not a good thing. Google promises to issue a software fix for the problem. The good news is that the lights turn on to indicate the device is listening. The bad news is you have to be looking at the device and there is no audible tone.

This is just a reminder that our technology doesn't always work as we expect it to. Be aware of the risks for anything connected to the Internet, including your phone.

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