Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Here's another reason not to bring an Alexa type device into your hoe

UPDATE: That should be "home", not "hoe".  I'm leaving the title unchanged because it's kind of funny, especially with the comments. /UPDATE

As if you needed another reason, but this one is a doozy:
In a paper to be presented today at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) in Berlin, Germany, computer scientists Gierad Laput, Karan Ahuja, Mayank Goel, and Chris Harrison describe a real-time, activity recognition system capable of interpreting collected sound. 
In other words, a software that uses devices' always-on builtin microphones to sense what exactly's going on in the background.
So now Alexa won't just know what you're saying, it will know what you're doing.  And they'll use that information for - what?  Of course, all the Fanbois who get these damned things have carefully gone over the license agreement before clicking "Accept", amirite?

Damn.  Doesn't anyone remember Homer's story about the Trojan Horse?  It was considered a classic when I was young.

4 comments:

ASM826 said...

I don't have voice activated wi-fi devices in any of my garden tools.

talnik said...

Or my GF.

Steve said...

Are you sure it wasn't a Trojan Rabbit? I seem to remember a rabbit.

Archer said...

Of course, all the Fanbois who get these damned things have carefully gone over the license agreement before clicking "Accept", amirite?

Doesn't matter. The EULA doesn't explain exactly what they're accepting ("consenting to"), so the logged "Accept" is invalid.

Read: "Stop thinking about consent: it isn't possible and it isn't right" (found via Bruce Scheier).

TL;DR version: You're told they collect information and you accept that. BUT, you're not told all of what they collect or what they use it for. The "Accept" button creates a contract, but that contract is full of holes, omissions, and outright lies. Thus, the contract should not be valid even if you click "Accept".