Tag Archives: Echo

Panda Security

Your Virtual Assistant Knows Quite a Lot about You

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“OK, Google.” With this simple voice command, the Google Home smart speaker sprung to life in a recent Super Bowl ad for Mountain View’s virtual assistant. To the surprise of many viewers, so did the Google Home in their own living room. OK, indeed. Just one more reminder that virtual assistants, capable of turning on lights or putting together playlists or making purchases online, are also spies in our very own homes.

In fact, their gift for listening in on conversations and keeping them on file can make them a good helper for solving crimes as well. The local police in a US town asked Amazon if it would allow them to access the information of an Amazon Echo. The smart speaker may have stored information that could help clear up some points of their ongoing investigation. Ultimately, such a device will record anything that happens if prompted, and we’ve seen that sometimes its owner is not the only one to wake it up from its dormant state (OK, Google…). So, it begs the question: how can you wipe its memory?

Deleting the memory of Alexa and Google Assistant

Alexa, the virtual assistant that only speaks English (for now), is the brain of the Amazon Echo. She will be the brain behind other products, as well, it seems. In the last Consumer Electronic Show, Lenovo presented an affordable device that works with Alexa, and Huawei will integrate it into its Mate 9 smartphones. In order to protect our privacy, it will come in handy to know how to delete the information they keep squirrelled away on their servers.

For Alexa, you can do it either from the app itself, available for Android and iOS, or from the website. It’s as simple as going to Settings, History. From there, you can select the files you wish to delete permanently (or the, um, evidence you wish to destroy). From the website the process is slightly different, but just as simple. Just go to the menu that allows you to manage your content and devices. From there, select the Amazon Echo and request to delete recordings.

The procedure is similar for deleting data from Google Assistant, the virtual assistant that for now is only available for Google Home, Android Wear, Google Allo, and the Google Pixel. From My Activity, the page that allows you to see an overview of your activity on Google’s various services, you can filter results to only see the data kept by your virtual assistant, or Voice and Audio services. Once there, you can either delete all the files at once, or just start clicking away and have a field day deleting them one by one.

In culling as much information on us as possible, the obvious goal of these virtual assistants is to offer more personalized services. But it’s nice to know that the dirt they have on you can be swept under the rug without any hassle.

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AVG

Hello, Alexa. Amazon Makes Bold Move Into IoT

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Amazon is among the technology companies trying to seize the IoT space, and voice activation technology is a key part of the puzzle – as is artificial intelligence.

With its newly enhanced product, Amazon Echo (with Alexa), the company may do the trick, based on rave reviews amidst its recent (July 14) roll-out, which included going beyond beta phase and adding services. The device is now available to anyone, not just Amazon Prime members, who were the first to give it a try.

Basically, Echo is designed around the user’s voice, and is a hands-free speaker system that connects you to the outside world. It gradually adapts to the user’s voice and inflection.

It has seven microphones and the device connects to Alexa, a cloud-based voice service, to provide information, answer questions, play music, read the news, check sports scores or the weather, and more. So think of it as a smartphone service without the smartphone and you begin to get the picture…

Echo plays music from Amazon Music, Prime Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and other systems. If you want to wake up in the morning to Eye of the Tiger, just say “Alexa” and ask.

But there is more. For example, it’s compatible with Philips Hue connected-devices so that you can control lights and switches with your voice. As industry analyst Tim Bajarin wrote in his review on PC Magazine: “You can expect Amazon to get light switches, door locks, appliances, and more connected to the Echo so it becomes the central control point for an eventual home information and automation system.

Amazon is throwing serious money behind its voice recognition plans in hopes to become a key player. It has put $100 million dollars into The Alexa Fund to “fuel voice technology innovation.” So, the race is on.

It’s fascinating to me how IoT, voice commands, technology, convenience, and modern ideas are all converging. It’s an exciting time to be in tech, to be sure.

Finally, on a side note: I find intriguing that Alexa is again molded in a woman’s voice, soothing like Siri. Is this because all the programmers (or marketers) are trying to reach the key decision makers in the smart home – or were so frightened by HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey and his representation of an AI-based future? But I’ll save that as a topic for another day…