the age of technology
MAY/JUNE 2017 | TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 107
By Robert Hessel
Have you ever thought, “Siri, how safe is my home
with you eavesdropping on me all the time?”
It’s 2017 and most of us have smartphones, which
are increasingly playing a larger role in the smart home
revolution, whether via Apple’s Homekit with Siri, Google Home
or Amazon’s popular voice controllable Echo system. Since
it is easy to tell these devices to find an address or to play our
favorite music, have you thought how easy it would be to have
them record everything you’re saying and that there is a potential
risk that what they hear could be used against you or your home?
Recently, law enforcement attempted to obtain recordings
from Amazon in its efforts to resolve a murder, and discovered
that Apple keeps Siri requests for six months. While Amazon
refused to turn over the recordings due to the warrant not being
specific enough, this is the kind of thing that can heighten your
paranoia to alarming levels. We all want murders to be solved,
but we also want our own conversations to be private.
To protect your privacy, you can start by pressing the “mute”
button at the top of Amazon Echo and Home Google devices.
You can also manage the search history of these gadgets by
monitoring them from your phone through their apps or
Amazon’s “Manage my Devices” menu option when you log
into your account from your computer. The main concern is
that of privacy, since when the information is transmitted from
your device to the Cloud, the same is encrypted. Therefore, at
least for now, hackers are not able to access it.
Another simple solution is to not link banking, credit card, or
email information to Apple Homekit, Amazon Echo or Google
Home. While it would make your life easier to ask these widgets
to make a purchase or check a balance on your behalf, doing it the
old-fashioned way is a lot safer. The 10 seconds of time you might
save by having these machines do it for you creates a big risk.
As for Siri and Google on your smartphones, there’s always
the option of having the microphone disabled from your settings.
Whether convenience or privacy is more important to you is the
question you will have to answer for yourself.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Hessel at Source 1 Solutions can be
contacted at (727) 538-4114 or source1security.com.
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