Are Smart Devices Spying On Us? Life has really changed. Many of us now have electronic devices in our homes. These devices are incredibly helpful but like so many other things there is a good side and a bad side. Let’s take the newest fad as an example of what I am talking about. Recently video doorbells have become very popular. To illustrate how popular they are a recent poll was taken which stated 25% of people with wireless service in the United States plan to buy a video door bell. There are many different brands of video doorbells on the market but the most popular one seems to be the Ring doorbell. It has been touted as making things a lot safer by allowing people to see who was at the door from whatever location they are at by using their smart phone. It is important to note however, if you want to record a video from it, you must subscribe and there is a fee. The fee depends on how many devices you want to attach to the Bell. Attaching one device has a lower fee than attaching more than one. If you use Echo devices they will attach to your bell for free. This will allow you to see your front door, and talk to your front door. You will not be able to create videos unless you have paid the fee. When you buy the bell there is a free thirty day trial. Recently there has been a lot of complaints by consumers who have purchased this device because they claim hackers are getting into it, but even worse is the fact employees have been fired from the company for looking into your bell. As I said you can see there are ups and downs to consider. Home assistants are another area where devices are flooding the market. Probably the most famous one is the Echo, but there are several other ones that have made an appearance such as Google Home, Sonos One, JBL Link, and Apple Home Pod, to name a few. It seems the most popular one is the Echo. These devices can be an incredible help if used properly. Let me discuss the Amazon Echo since I know the most about it. It is a wonderful device for reminding one to take medicine as you can program reminders on a daily basis or tell the machine to remind you at certain times every day what to do. You can also set alarms. There are basically two types of Echos, one with the screen and one without. Many models of each one exist. I find when I am writing and need a quick answer on how to spell a word, the device is very helpful. Originally, I had purchased the one without a screen called the dot. It became famous because of a programming error that caused the device to sometimes respond with a chilling laugh, but I believe this has been corrected. It got bad press because it was found it would sometimes record what you are saying without you giving any command and it would save that information. This stopped a lot of people from buying it and I can understand why. This is why I had to weigh the pros and cons and I came to the conclusion it was more helpful than not in my situation. The device with the screen was even more helpful because you could see answers and treated as a sort of search device where you could see what was going on. I once asked it to show me a Laurel and Hardy movie, and it did it without a problem. The Echo with a screen is a must if you use it with a camera bell and want to see who is at the door. The next device I want to talk about is the smart television. It is very handy to have a television which allows you to connect to the Internet and the streaming video. This releases a whole new world of entertainment, but it is not a giant leap for those of us who were ready had a Roku box. When these televisions came out, complaints began to be heard about how they were listening into conversations. Some people even got worried that if their television had a built-in camera it would be spying on them. The truth of the matter is you probably could save a lot of money by buying a television which was not a smart television and hooking up the Roku box or an equivalent such as the fire USB from Amazon. To illustrate what I am saying I purchased a fire USB on Black Friday for only $9.95. It may be extremely difficult however to find a good television which is not a smart television and this is becoming a problem. Even the manufacturers admit that a smart television might pick up on your conversation. We are living in a world where devices are sometimes spying on us whether it be on purpose or by accident. One of the problems is, in order for many of these devices to work properly they must always be listening. Most of the time they are only listening for the keyword which tells them you are about to give a command, but sometimes while you were talking to someone you may inadvertently use a word in a sentence which is the keyword, or the machine might think it heard the keyword when it heard something similar. When that happens, it might record your conversation. If we are talking about an Alexa device, you can access your recent voice history, select a date range, and delete the selected recordings. I don’t know how you would do it on other devices but they probably have something similar so you would have to go to the manufacturers page and get help. Soon there will be nowhere in the home where you will be able to go without a device listening for a command. Today many of us can go into our kitchens and most of them will be device free but the day is coming when even your refrigerator will be listening for a command since it will be connected to the Internet and we already have some of these in production. There are those who now suspect their smart phones are listening to their conversations and not just relaying them. Good housekeeping magazine decided to test this theory. For two weeks they mentioned different brands of products within earshot of the microphone on cell phones. The good news is the phones did not save any of this data or transmit it. The only time they even received ads for these products was when they were using the phones to search online for them.
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