These days, privacy is non-existent. Most technological devices (smart speakers, smartphones , etc.) are “watching us.” But who likes that? No one. No one wants their conversations to be monitored. Let alone monitored and interrupted.
For example, you may have experienced the following scenario: you are watching TV and discussing something related to the TV program. Suddenly, you hear a voice say: “The circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles.”
The voice comes from 's Siri Apple. Or 's Alexa Amazon. Or any smart personal assistant.
Such incidents happen often. You might think they happen rarely and randomly. However, a new study from Northeastern University shows that this kind of eavesdropping on conversations is an everyday occurrence.
The University's study shows that smart speakers are activated up to 19 times a daywithout you speaking to them. This means they are recording conversations even when you don't want them to.
In fact, the average wake-up time is 43 seconds. In short, Alexa, Siri, and other smart speakers record 43 seconds of your conversations.
The researchers came to these conclusions by analyzing several TV shows to see which words trigger the activation of smart speakers.
The smart speakers they tested are the following: Google Home Mini first generation, Apple HomePod first generation, Microsoft's Harman Kardon Invoke, Amazon Echo Dot second generation speakers, Amazon Echo Dot third generation speakers.
Want to know which one of them records the most informationwithout you knowing it? Siri. It's one of the smart speakers that isn't very good at understanding words, so it's triggered by random words.
According to the researchers, Siri can confuse many of the words it hears and think that users are addressing it. Alexa and Google also make some such mistakes. This is how smart speakers manage to listen in on conversations that they shouldn't.
What can you do about it, though? According to a former Amazon executive, one solution is to turn off smart speakers when you don't need them. He also said that Alexa allows you to delete recordings.
