Triggered Listening – Our devises and phones are all listening. That’s right all of our devices are listing to all of our conversations, all of the time. When you think about it we all asked for it; we wanted Siri, Alexia or Hey Google and Cortana listen to us, and even understand our voices. But, now that we know they are, what are we to do about it?
Scary? Triggered Listening
I recently heard a story retold about two tech professionals that were literally at bar talking. They both had the most recent, up to date version of an I-phone, but they were safely stowed in their pockets. The pair had both recently made a trip to Japan for a Tech show and conference.
They both enjoyed the country and their business trips very much. Both went on and on about how they would like to return for a pleasurable vacation, as opposed to a business trip. They both finished their beers and went on their way. However, the next day… they both found advertisements for low priced air fair to, where else but Japan?
Coincidence
The two of them both noticed it and thought it was very strange. Could Triggered Listening be actually happening to them? So, after some conversation, the two techies decided to run an experiment. They would independent of each other have a conversation near their phones. The topics were unusual but just common enough that Siri might hear it, and understand the topics?
Well in both cases ads showed up on their FaceBook accounts the next day, Siri was listening. I know we all have signed User Agreements for our all of our devices, including our phones. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out, but I’m 100% sure we all agreed to allow some version of Triggered Listening.
For the voice recognition to work, they need to listen to everything we say. They must have voice recognition just to turn on and respond to our questions. So, we all agreed to Triggered Listening. However, it is the Non- Triggered Listening I worry about.
Non-Triggered Listening
You might be asking yourself at this moment what is Non-Triggered listening. Well, it is when your wife texts askes you stop by Walgreens and pick up some Aleve. Then the next day an ad for Tylenol show up on your phone or FaceBook account. Scary Huh…
It is not really that scary, or hard to figure out. Remember we all signed (or agreed) to that pesky User Agreement. According to the user agreements, that we all digitally signed. Any conversations must stay on the phone. However, your global position system (GPS) built into the phone, knows you stopped by Walgreens. It’s not that hard to figure out; you bought Aleve. Mostly because you paid for it through your phone, after the wife’s text, and you used the GPS mapping to find the store. The rest is history.
In Conclusion
It’s not the apps fault when you paid for the Aleve on your phone to connect the purchase with a GPS coordinates and figure out what you bought. There might be additional culprits depending on that cool texting app that thought you would download.
Humm let me see, GPS + Phone Pay + Texting app = we know where you were, and what you bought. Now I can sell that data to another company, and so on. As mentioned before “the rest is history.” Well, in the end, it is kind of scary, but we are getting exactly what we asked for, we all wanted speech technology, and maps on our phones and our questions answered instantly.
But I might try going unplugged and open the encyclopedia the next time I have a question, or not. I guess I will ask Siri.
Moreover, always have e2-Total Solutions help you understand Triggerred Listening vs. non Triggered Listening.
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