Amazon Echo smart home device in a living room

Our Always Listening Devices

We’ve seen more and more that our data is an extremely valuable currency, so much so that, often the data that a company holds and is able to sell, may be more valuable than the actual service they offer in the first place.

Our devices are designed to gather as much data as possible too, from location and browsing habits, to ad placement. Interestingly, one of the biggest intrusions in recent years is the fact that our devices are always listening to us – data privacy is seeing a surge in attention, and with this focus comes negative press.

There’s plenty of examples out there, namely when it comes to either browsing recommendations on your phone, or for those with a home assistant like Amazon Alexa.

It’s also easy enough to try for yourself – think of a subject that you wouldn’t usually talk about. Let’s say you’ve never had to talk about dog toys before, as you don’t have a dog. You then spend the next hour or two verbalising that you need to find some new toys for that fake dog. The next thing you know, your recommended adverts and pages will likely all be suggestions toward dog toys.

Now this isn’t to suggest that it is listening to every conversation you have, as there have been plenty of studies that show otherwise, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that there may be more triggers for how our devices are collecting data ,than the average layman realises. One major talking point is, just how great an impact does granting permissions to these applications have.

This has become an increasingly voiced concern over the last few years as home assistants, such as the aforementioned, operate with the same narrative and similar ‘wake words.’ The trigger, or something resembling the wake word, had been picked up in background conversation, and through a very rare string of events had led to private conversations being picked up, recorded, and sent on to a separate contact.

Although the company response was that this happening was an extremely rare and unlikely occurrence, the fact that it has happened at all, and does continue to happen, continues to show how much data these devices collect.

Part of the issue, of course, can only be tipped to how our habits with our smart devices have changed. We’ve become extremely quick to adopt these newer technologies, such as home assistants, as we clamour to have these new and existing devices that can ease and automate our everyday lives – even if the use we have them for is extremely limited.

The same is true for our phones, as we upgrade every couple of years and rely on them for everything we do during the day. Mobile gaming has exploded as the hyper-casual consumer becomes ever more prominent in the market, and games for almost all casino player levels have captured a huge part of the gaming industry in a larger demographic than ever seen before.

And of course, the biggest culprit for data collection – modern social media. Combined across an array of platforms, they boast billions of users and we volunteer our information to them on a regular basis. What the everyday user may not understand, is that any message that is typed out but not sent, any photo uploaded but not shared – it’s all collected, stored and owned by the platforms that we use. Furthermore, there has been plenty of pushback here, many initiatives and reforms have been put into place to offer more protection for our data, but the true extent of data collection will always remain unknown.

Steps have been taken in an effort to offer some data protection, in order to prevent the hoarding of our data by these companies. In the EU, the introduction of GDPR has served as a big boon to those concerned with their privacy, and as fines have rolled out to those breaking GDPR laws, it is having an impact. A step in the right direction, but not without its flaws still – as long as the collection is clearly outlined, there is still a lot of grey area around what can or cannot be collected. In addition, requests for data to be removed are cumbersome – the user needs to directly contact the service and allow a lead time for that to happen.

As with our devices, initiatives to help with data protection will continue to change and grow with our evolving habits. The next question is how fast any initiative could be put into place with these changing habits.

The good news for those concerned, is that data privacy trepidations are being brought to attention – it seems that the majority are becoming increasingly concerned with how their data is being collected and used, and steps that can be taken to ensure that it is protected are becoming more common place. The longer this continues, the increased likelihood we’ll see initiatives such as GDPR finding a wider outreach and be granted more authority.

For now, steps taken to reduce breaches in our data privacy have to be taken at an individual level – monitoring which permissions our apps are allowed, using other apps that block those permissions for periods of time when the apps need to be used, as well as monitoring the services that we access. Social media is seeing a downtrend, as many turn away from the practices they employ, but the road to strong data privacy practices is a long one, and there’s still some way to go.

 

Staff Writer at CPO Magazine