The flow of personal data through voice interaction is exploding via devices such as Alexa, Google Home Assistant and Apple Home Pod. While these devices provides convenience and claim privacy – do they really protect your personal data? Can we trust them with every personal interaction that we do in our homes? They are made to look cool and the wave of the future. However as long as they are connected to their servers one can never be sure how your intimate personal home interaction data will be used.
The ‘big brother is always watching’ is becoming a reality if you own such a device that is connected and controlled by their manufacturers.
May be there is a better way.
Unless we decouple the device manufacturers from the service provider and include personal privacy protection features that will completely anonymize the data that that is sent outside your home, we can never be sure.
Consumers must claim for this decoupling and complete anonymization. While Apple is making some efforts in this space we still have a long way to go. Apple who is not be in the business of selling and using personal data for their profit like Google, Facebook and Amazon; will be in a better and credible position to sell this concept.
Until the consumers are educated on the privacy implications of these devices big tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook who profit from personal data will continue to endanger user privacy.
So think before getting one of these devices that is always listening to you.
Personal Computing - Decentralized 