Everything you say can be used against you

Future generations of smart speakers will have better capabilities, such as the ability to distinguish between the voices of various family members. But putting a microphone in every home may have unwanted consequences.

Since not all smart speakers are made equal, vendors might not have an upfront privacy policy of disclosing what data they collect and where it gets stored. But, even when you go with an established brand, be aware that smart speakers include microphones that allow you to take calls or pass commands to the device. Some of them may record fragments of conversations and send them to base to improve speech recognition capabilities. In this case, some information sent can include confidential conversations.

There’s also the fact that in rare instances, smart speakers have gone rogue — for example, when a device misunderstood a command and delivered X-rated messages to children. Such incidents may become a thing of the past as smart speakers become even smarter.

However, the voice-listening smart speakers could bring about a new era of surveillance. Already, law enforcement agencies have tried to obtain smart speaker records that could contain information relevant to criminal investigations.

There are ways for users to protect their privacy and make sure their smart speakers remain secure. For more information on how to protect your privacy and how to safeguard IoT devices against external intruders, check out the video above or visit www.bitdefender.com/box.