Digital assistants, which are becoming widespread day by day, are widely used in our phones, homes and cars. So, are digital assistants constantly listening to our conversations? Digital assistants that we communicate with by talking search the internet for us, give directions to where we want to go or create a shopping list for us. However, users are concerned about whether these apps are reliable, especially whether voice-commanded digital assistants are constantly listening to their speech. Digital assistants become active with certain words. One of the most frequently used digital assistants at the moment is Google Assistant, “OK, Hey or Hi Google”; Apple Siri, “Hey, Siri”; Amazon Alexa, “Alexa, Amazon, Echo, Computer”; Microsoft Cortana, on the other hand, starts to listen to you after waking up from sleep mode when you say "Cortana". Scientists from Northeastern University and the Royal College of London conducted a study to determine whether digital assistants listen to users when they are not active. For this, the researchers selected 12 popular TV shows with a lot of dialogue and determined whether digital assistant apps were activated during the talks on those series. As a result, there was no evidence that any of the digital assistants used in the experiment continuously recorded the voices of the users. However, it was determined that the devices were frequently activated erroneously, albeit for a short time. The time the devices stay active after they wake up from sleep mode erroneously varies between 8-10 seconds. The two most obvious reasons for digital assistant applications to be activated incorrectly are the unclear speech (for example, the inability of a non-native English speaker to pronounce English expressions correctly) or the low level of sound reaching the device due to the distance of the speaker. In addition, the researchers say they have found no evidence that digital assistant apps are a secret word that makes them wake from sleep mode. Hackers or fraudsters can access digital assistants to access your credit card information, internet passwords or personal information. For this reason, do not forget to check the privacy and security settings of the digital assistant applications as when using other technological devices or applications.
Are Digital Assistants Listening to Us?
