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Being at your beck and call is central
to the “personality” of your digital friend, but there are situations when the
device could use some time off.
Do you start the day with “Alexa, what’s
the weather today?”
Many of you may have a digital friend at
home, an Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Microsoft Cortana
(does anyone actually use this?). Has your digital friend ever interrupted your
conversation or randomly spoken up despite not being hailed? The answer is
likely to be yes, and your response has probably been just to dismiss the
interruption as unwanted.
Just say the word(s)
A recent study by
Imperial College London and Northeastern University examined how many times
digital assistants activate without the wake-up word being used. The devices
were subjected to 125 hours of Netflix content from numerous shows; the verbal
content was analyzed with the closed caption text from the show to remove the
instances when an actor may have used the actual wake-up word. The devices
wrongly interpreted a word and activated up to 19 times per day.
The experiment was repeated 12 times
with the same content and the result showed little to no consistency, less than
9% of all the “misheard” dialog that activated a device did so in 75% or more
of the replication runs. Some devices activated on word patterns or specific
letter sounds – for example, Alexa activated on words that contain a “k” and
sound similar to Alexa, such as “exclamation” or “Kevin’s car”. Not being able
to replicate the test result consistently suggests that there is a level of
randomness to the unwanted activations. So, don’t take it personally the next
time your digital assistant interrupts.
When the digital assistant is awoken and
springs into life, the interaction is captured so it can be analyzed and the
instruction, if there is one, is acted upon. Some of the systems retain a voice
recording or a text transcript of the interaction either until you decide to
delete it or the vendor’s policy removes it, based on time or other criteria.
At the moment of an unexpected
activation, or if you don’t want any other activation stored, then each
assistant has the ability to delete the last interaction. For example, if
during a TV show the device mistakenly awakens, a response from you of “Alexa –
delete what I just said” will remove the last interaction. For the more privacy
conscious then, an “Alexa – delete everything I said today” might be part of
the good night routine.
If you have introduced the digital
assistant to additional digital friends, such as a home automation system, then
the interaction is analyzed and the instruction or request is transferred to
the third party. What data is being shared with the third party will depend on
the functionality of the additional services or devices.
Your digital friend is listening constantly, is activated on demand or randomly and
is potentially storing the interaction forever. And in some circumstances,
maybe chatting with other digital friends to fulfill your requests. If only
human friends were that attentive.
So, how does this
relate to working from home?
Hopefully, you have adopted a routine
and start work at a regular time and maybe even kick-off with a team call to sync with colleagues. I suspect that, like me, you then have a varied set of calls and video meetings throughout the day; some more
sensitive than others. If you work in a collaborative open office space in
normal circumstances, then you probably utilize a private space to participate
in the more sensitive or confidential calls to avoid any inadvertent sharing of
information.
But what if you’re working from home and
know that the digital assistant is constantly listening, is extremely
attentive, and is not an employee of the company bound by any confidentiality
agreement? Then additional caution beyond what you practice in the office
should be applied.
When conducting a sensitive call while
working from home, switch off the digital assistant’s microphone and camera to
avoid potentially sharing sensitive material. If you find it difficult to adopt
an “as needed” approach to switching the digital friend off, I recommend giving
your digital assistant the day off while you work.
The risk is not only from oversharing
with your digital assistant’s vendor; there is also a risk that a bad actor
could gain access to your account or, worse still, inflict a data breach on the
vendor and have access to all previous interactions.
This could have been a short article,
unplug the digital assistant, open the front door and throw it in the street,
but I know my own paranoia will probably not resonate with that many of you.
ESET has been here for you for over 30 years. We want to assure you that
we will be here in order to protect your online activities during these
uncertain times, too.
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