Do you have Amazon Echo and Google Home voice assistant? You can ask for nees, your favourite songs, the news and many more things.You’ll be turning off lights and requesting videos from bed. The world is yours.
But do you know that this little talking cylinder is always listening you and along with that it also record and save things you say.
Don’t freak out. Echo and Home simply continue the trend of saving a crumb trail of queries, except with snippets of your voice.
ALSO READ: Binny Bansal Steps Down as CEO of Flipkart Following Allegations Of Personal Misconduct
If you only use Chrome in “Incognito Mode,” put tape over your laptop camera, and worry about snoops sniffing your packets, a web-connected microphone in your home seems risky.
It’s a fair thing to be unsettled about. But recording your voice is a major part of how voice assistants work. Here’s how devices like Echo and Home record your voice, why they do it, what they do with the data, and how to scrub those recordings.
When you make a voice request, The Alexa enabled devices and Google Home record and stream audio clips about what you say.
These files are then sent to a server for procesing the audio and for formulating a response.
These recorded clips are associated with the user account, and thr whole process is enabled by default.
Since the brains are located miles away Home and Echo need an internet connection to work.
The only spoken commands they understand on their own are “wake words” or “activation phrases,” things like “Alexa” or “OK Google.”
Once you say those magic words, the voice assistants jump to life, capture your voice request, and sling it to their disembodied cloud brains over Wi-Fi.
It means the mics continuously listen to you even when you don’t request things from Google or Alexa.
ALSO READ: Indian government wants to ban adult content on the web
