Hey Siri... Are You Spying On Me??

As strange as it sounds, your next smartphone might be constantly listening to everything you say. Most consumers are aware of the pleasant, eager to please personalities that live within their phones already. In fact, each of the big 3 international smartphone software manufactures—Apple, Google and Microsoft—has their own unique ‘personal assistant’ for their phones. Take for instance Apple’s ‘Siri’ service—users can pose a variety of requests that range from “What’s the weather?” to “Tell me a joke” and receive an upbeat, occasionally sarcastic response. These nearly human assistants are present in effectively every new phone sold today.  

In the past, these personal assistant services were activated with a specific mechanical user input such as holding down the home button. However, smartphones are beginning to offer hands free access to these digital companions through the use of phrases such as “Hey Siri…”, “Ok Google…” or “Hey Cortana…”. At first glance this seems like a convenient and neat technology. After all, who wouldn’t want access to these ‘assistants’ from across the room? But we must consider the trade off between our privacy and the convenience factor that these technologies present us with.

It all comes down to the fact that your phone must be listening at all times for that particular magic phrase that indicates you’d like like to use the service. In the case of the ‘Hey Siri’ feature, Apple claims that “In no case is the device recording what the user says or [is] sending that information to apple before the feature is triggered”. Although we might not have any reason to doubt the validity of this claim, it’s not difficult to imagine how much information could be gained about a particular person by having access to every conversation they’ve had.

Personally, I’m inclined to believe the crafty engineers and computer scientists at these tech companies when they make the claim that no information is being stored. After all, why would the bright people at Apple or Google want to hear everything everybody says? But as recording and associated tailored information delivery services continue to become more integrated with our devices, we must also become more aware of the ways this technology can be exploited.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole digital personal assistant trend is we seem to gloss over the fact that we’re being recorded at the expense of convenience. At what point does this constant recording become creepy or intrusive? Or, do we always trust our phones not to betray us? At what point do we draw the line?

Works Consulted:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/technology/personaltech/iphone-6s-hands-free-siri-is-an-omen-of-the-future.html?ref=technology&_r=0