Take charge of your privacy so there are no surprises about how much information your digital assistant is holding onto.
Has Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Google Home taken up residence in your home? If not, you're probably at least considering adding one of these digital helpers. They are supremely useful after all, providing assistance with everything from weather forecasts to smart-home control. All you need to do is ask.
In order to fulfill your requests, however, both of these voice-activated digital assistants must upload your verbal commands to the cloud. Just what does that entail? The short answer is that your commands are saved to your Amazon or Google account respectively.
And the more you use these devices, and the more services you link to them, the more their respective manufacturers will know about you. Those insights can range from what kinds of movies and music you like to what time you go to bed.
Fortunately, there are privacy options you can manage, as well as ways to purge that collected information. We’ll show you how you can get the most out of these devices while maintaining the maximum amount of personal privacy.
How these voice assistants work
Google Home, Amazon Echo (and it’s cost-reduced sibling, Echo Dot) are always listening, so they can spring into action upon hearing the wake word. With Google Home, it’s “OK, Google” or “Hey, Google.” “Alexa” is the Echos’ default wake word, but you can change it to “Amazon” or “Echo” if you find those easier to remember.
This “always listening” feature freaks some people out, but Amazon and Google both assure us that while their devices might be listening, it doesn’t mean every conversation is recorded in the cloud.
That happens only when the wake words are detected. You can read Google’s privacy policy on this Google help page, and you’ll find Amazon’s on this Alexa support site. ..Source.. by Derek Walter
No comments:
Post a Comment