Alexa switch on my AC
Alexa play my favourite music
OK Google. Call Subhash Jio
How good we feel, when all our work is done just by uttering few words.
Yes friends, a new revolution is happening with the arrival of voice command devices. Every day we come to know about new gadgets which we can control with voice command.
It is a good thing to accept the technological development and take convenience from it.
But it would be better if safety can also maintained along with convenience.
For this, we have to understand the dark part of the situation also.
Is it not that we are taking convenience and putting our safety at risk?
How does this technology work and how useful is it?
How do we compromise our privacy and security?
What can be the risk from that?
What should we do to reduce these risks?
What are legal provisions?
Now a days, personal and home appliances such as Smart TV, Speaker System, Kitchen Appliances, home heating and lighting system and Personal Health Monitor operating with Voice command are becoming very popular.
Apart from Smart Speaker marketed by Amazon and Google, there are Smart Watches specially designed for children, which are equipped with tracking device, phone, and voice command technology.
This IoT technology is already being used by some toy manufacturers.
Google and Apple’s smart phone devices have inbuilt voice recognition feature. That is, your hardware, software and cloud based services that you use are all being tracked.
Some Echo devices already have cameras, and if face recognition capability was added, then we are in the eyes of an unknown third party, even in our most private places. Even the path and destinations of our movements are being tracked.
The Fitbit sleep pattern shows when you sleep, when you wake up, what your sleep pattern is. Everything is being watched about your calls, your messages, your searches on the net, your calendar, your locations and so on. All information can be tracked about your habits, routine health and contacts.
History
The trend of IoT devices started in 2012 when voice control started replacing keyboard / touch screen to operate software and apps installed in computer or mobile. The Google Assistant took the initiative in this area. Siri of Apple and Cortana of Microsoft further enhanced this technology and developed many VCDs which are controlled by vocal interaction. Today the biggest market in this field is held by Amazon’s Echo and Alexa.
How Technology Works
Your VCD collects your voice and directs it to a cloud based central server where it is converted from Speech to text and sent to the service provider App. Then the app responds and the device in turn gets activated to react to the action or query.
Connecting devices and application accounts through the central hub is called daisy-chaining. This makes Echo omniscient, that is, a central source of information from all connected devices. All the data collected by Echo is sent to Amazon’s Cloud Server where it is converted to different outputs with algorithms of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in order to affect user experience.
Risk Involved
Risk comes from the fact that big technology companies, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Apple, besides process and storing the voice data collected through these devices, share it. Although data is usually shared with different divisions within the same company, but more frequently the data is shared, the more is privacy issue likely to be compromised.
Amazon’s Echo and Alexa are becoming more popular and are also becoming a matter of concern. Amazon gives data access not only to its employees but also to many third party contractors. Setting up Echo and Alexa means that all the online activity on our device is being tracked – searching, sending or receiving voice messages.
There is not much transparency or control over how these companies will use the data outputs or with whom they will share it. A lot of data is used by the advertising agencies which analyze your personal habits, health data, search data. They use it to influence your buying pattern.
The risk is even greater when our personal data goes into the wrong hands which can threaten and blackmail us, or can exploit us in some way. We have activated most of the apps from our mobile number and have also given permission to access our contact list, so you can understand that once someone finds an entry in our data, then we can be tracked to what extent.
Remedies
From this, we should not conclude to deactivate all voice command devices and remove all apps.
Technology will keep developing at its pace and we also have to move and match ourselves with it.
Legal Provisions
For the security of our Sensitive Personal Data, section 43A of the IT Act 2000 provides that whatever organization is responsible for collecting, processing, maintaining our data must maintain reasonable security measures. Failing which, will be considered liable for information disclosure and will be penalized as per section 72A of IT Act 2000.
This aspect is also being covered in the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019. The company has to mention it clearly in its privacy policy that what information it will take from you, where it will process, how it will be used, with whom it will share and how long will it preserve the data.
But friends, the law will do its job and we should also have full trust in it but should also understand that there are some limitations too. Data comes out of so many stages that it is not easy to protect it completely. And how you will come to know from where your information has been leaked?
It is not easy for every man to get into the legal process.
Safety Steps
So another way for us is the use of technology with full awareness. The precautions we can keep for safe use of these IoT devices are,
- Do not do daisy chaining of devices unless it is very important.
- Set the primary user’s voice recognition separately for each device.
- Use WPA2 encryption security in your Wi Fi. Do not use open hotspot.
- Whichever VCD is not in use, keep its power off.
- Set up two factor authentication in your main account which is linked to VCD. Keep strong password
- Keep your ,purchasing mechanism off when not in use, or lock it by setting a different password.
- Change the default ‘wake words’ like ‘Alexa’, ‘OK Google’.
- Do not use any third party service like IFTTT (if this then that) in operating your VCD.
- Somewhere you may have to decide priority in convenience and safety.
Friends, the biggest risk is not of technology but it is that we do not understand it completely. We must avoid our general habit to click on ‘OK’, ‘I Agree’ in any process without reading it. Read, understand and then move forward, then only law will be able to help you.
