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bspicer
Newcomer I

Work From Home and Voice Assistants (Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google) Policies

According to a Northeastern University and Imperial College of London study that focused on voice assistants (Alexa, Google, Siri and Cortana), it found that accidental activations occurs up to 19 times a day and records 43 seconds during those activations.     

 

Amazon has even admitted thousands of workers listen to conversations to improve customer experience.

 

Lawyers have suggested people should turn off the devices so they don't accidentally activate during a phone call while discussing sensitive information.

 

Curious if anyone has implemented policies around this issue for their work from home employees.

 

Thanks

1 Reply
tmekelburg1
Community Champion

Short answer not yet. I think the best thing to do at this point is provide awareness and education on the privacy settings that those assistants have. For example, in Alexa you can disable the feature that allows Amazon employees to review recordings, have an audible alert and light from the Echo device after the wake word, physical button to turn off the mic, and delete recordings on set time frequencies or manually. 

 

It can be put in a policy but it's not really enforceable if the Staff are at home. Maybe a reminder technique before official business is discussed is to remind everyone to turn off or disable all smart assistants in the immediate vicinity. It doesn't help with one-on-one customer calls of course but it could help establish good privacy habits.

 

For max privacy, I'd recommend turning your cell phone completely off (Not a new idea of course). I've had products advertised in my Facebook feed that I've never searched or typed in a text message but we were discussing it during a meeting or conversation. "Tin Foil Hat Engaged!"