There's a very old joke where my wife asks me "Why do you have to carry that gun?" I reply, "To protect the family from decepticons." The wife laughed. I laughed. The toaster laughed. I shot the toaster.
Are there any real devices in your home about which you may be, or should be paranoid?
I have Amazon echo devices. I love them. My typical night goes like this. "Alexa, read my book <name of book>" (Alexa starts one of my Audible books", "Alexa set sleep timer one hour" (will stop reading in 1 hour). "Alexa, goodnight" (Alexa turns off the bedroom light and turns on the ceiling fan." In addition, I snagged two Echo Show devices for peanuts during Amazon sales when they were getting rid of old or refurbished versions. They still work well, and I can tell Alexa to show me outside security cameras.
Several years ago I performed a test to see if the Echo devices were listening for clues to determine how to customize advertising. Without addressing Alexa, I talked to my wife about getting a dog and what kind of dog toys would be good for young puppies. Next time I went to the Amazon site, it had suggestions about dog toys. I would call that definitive "snooping" proof except for two things: I had been shopping at the Amazon site for cat toys shortly before the test. Perhaps that triggered the dog toy recommendation. Also, I tried a similar test just recently, and it didn't cause Amazon to recommend any products related to my conversation. Did my Echo devices snoop before but not now? Did Amazon use AI to figure out if I was faking such conversations? Do Echo devices simply not snoop at all?
I've read stories on the 'net about similar experiences with Google home. There are even stories about your phone, desktop or laptop with a microphone listening in 24/7. I even read about some smart TVs listening in. And we all know that if it's on the Internet, it must be true.
And don't get me started on laptop cameras. I have orange tape covering mine. At a company meeting some years ago, I noticed everyone had a piece of tape covering their laptop camera. I guess I'm not the only one suspicious of these things.
So, what about you? Anything you suspect is invading your privacy? As a software developer is there anything you can do to ensure your privacy, or is privacy dead forever?
