Mr Branding: Smart Assistant users believe that their devices are secretly listening to their conversations

Thursday, October 27, 2022

Smart Assistant users believe that their devices are secretly listening to their conversations

With rising data breaching incidents and privacy concerns, most Americans and Canadians believe that smart speakers are secretly listening to their conversations and suspect that they are targeted with ads based on this.

The results are extracted from the survey conducted by Chubb Insurance, an organization that looks into matters such as breaching personal data or lack of data security.

On the occasion of the 5th yearly study on this, the company stated that users get annoyed and frustrated with the steps they’ve to take to secure their personal information. However, it seems that the gap between initiatives taken by the users and the insight they have on such matters is now being filled. The figures highlighting the rise in data security concerns have gone up in the last 3 years. Currently, almost 92% of users are worried about their data falling into the wrong hands, and 56% of them are highly stressed about such a breach. On the other hand, data from 3 years back showed that 80% of users were concerned and 39% of them were highly concerned.

With such concerns at their highest, people believe smart devices may also have a lot to do with this. As per the survey results, almost 79% of the participants think their smart speaker can listen to the conversation they have in front of it, while 67% think that they have been targeted with ads based on the discussion they were having near their smart speaker.

Devices such as Echo from Amazon and Nest Audio from Google are voice-activated, which means they can easily be turned on, which may lead to the discussion being recorded. However, if companies do end up using these devices for such means, it would call for governmental action against them, which may include the imposition of heavy fines.

The study also highlighted how much users struggle with managing their credentials. 61% of them agree that it’s hard to remember them, while 35% of them use the support of password managing applications and another 35% of them use the same password for different platforms. It was also observed that people tend to create passwords based on things that may be important to them, which could be someone’s name or a date. As compared to the results observed last year, almost 51% of the users tend to use two-factor authenticator services.

The survey was based on 1605 participants aged 18 or above, having half a million in cash and an internet connection. The survey went on from August to September.