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Software engineers are right to be scared of these voice assistants. The problem is that typical sloppy, glitchy software (and hardware) is poised to record yo
by ploxiln 8y ago
Software engineers are right to be scared of these voice assistants.
The problem is that typical sloppy, glitchy software (and hardware) is poised to record your voice and send it somewhere at any time, and that somewhere will play or record this, because that's what all this stuff more-or-less setup to do. It's already happened! Alexas have already "butt dialed" other people (not just amazon's servers)!
Think a bit broader than that. Things can play out of various speakers in your house and influence these voice assistants. Again, advertisements have already triggered voice assistants. Research has shown how it is possible to play voice assistant commands that humans can't hear. These devices are poised and ready to record anything anytime and send it anywhere, or just use your credentials to do anything.
My laptop is different. It does have a webcam and a microphone, and straight-up locally installed malware could take advantage. But it's not quite the boulder-atop-cliff situation of the voice assistants. I've never enabled Siri, I've disabled it everywhere possible, I don't install junk software, I often check on things in Activity Manager because freakin web apps use so much memory/cpu/network these days, so I would notice. The webcam has a light which is hack-able but it's pretty hard. My phone has Bixby but I've never enabled it, I've never clicked "I agree", I've disabled the button and the swipe activation and the background services which I am able to without rooting the device. It's in reasonable shape.
- 13of40 8y agoSomething kind of eye-opening for me was that I recently found an Android setting to make my phone (a OnePlus 5T) vibrate whenever any app requests location data, and even with location access denied to everything, it still vibrates about once every ten or fifteen minutes. As an end user I'm helpless to know whether it's a normal function of the OS, or if I have malware, or if it's Google, or OnePlus, or the Chinese. I can only hope I'm a little fish caught up in someone's advertising scheme and I'm not being tracked by the FBI because I said the wrong mix of things online. (You know, because there's no way I'm getting rid of my smart phone.)
- maccard 8y agoIMO this is a failing of Android that should be dealt with immediately. iOS has had a big red bar across the top of the screen for years when location or microphone is being accessed.
- quikoa 8y agoGoogle relies for a great deal on advertising and gathering user data, unlike Apple. On top of that they don't have tight control over who sells Android devices, nor do they appear interested in doing so. Sadly it doesn't look like they're interested in delivering better data protection for their users.
- yayana 8y agoGoogle sells their own phones and could introduce hardware driven indicators next to the camera and microphones for when they are on if their goal was not to be evil. It is a general problem that no one makes strong claims about indicators, so making a software driven camera led is not bad for a manufacturer's reputation.
- throwawaymath 8y ago> Research has shown how it is possible to play voice assistant commands that humans can't hear. Do you mind linking to the research you're thinking about?
- ploxiln 8y agoSure, good idea: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf