There are many devices that we have at home that have microphones. They have entered as if nothing had happened, without raising their voices and promising us that they will help us to do things around the house, or to entertain us, with no effort other than speaking to ask for anything. Smart speakers, connected screens, mobiles, tablets, televisions, watches... practically any device has the ability to listen to us but to what extent does it affect us?
The threat is confirmed
Amazon, in addition, already has behind it a small list of incidents due to listening to the audios of its users, even in those moments in which nothing is required of its assistant, Alexa, as happened with the ring doorbells and whose recordings were viewed by some workers as a way, as they indicated, of quality control and improvement of the service. An excuse that has become recurrent when we want to say that we are very interested in what we talk about but, above all, what we want.
Now, a report by researchers from the University of Washington, UC Davis, UC Irvine, and Northeastern University claims that Amazon smart speakers "listen" and develop a "follow-up" which concludes with users "profiling" to target their entire ad ecosystem on Echo speakers. This collection leads to "infer what the interests of the users are" and, subsequently, focus all the ads in that direction both within the devices and outside when we browse through the web itself.
In this way, this belief that we all have that after talking about a topic that interests us, we end up seeing advertising wherever we go, would be confirmed, which is not a good sign when it comes to keeping internet giants and companies advertising, away from us. Here, in the case of Amazon with its smart devices, it seems that there is a special bond that they have even come to recognize openly from the company itself.
“Similar to what you would experience if you made a purchase on Amazon.com or requested a song through Amazon Music, if you ask Alexa to order paper towels or play a song on Amazon Music, the record of that purchase or playback of the song may report advertisements that are displayed on Amazon or other sites where Amazon places ads,” said company spokeswoman Lauren Raemhild. “Customers may receive interest-based ads when they use premium ad-supported content, such as music, radio, or streaming news.”
Your data, in the hands of many companies?
Another interesting piece of data from the analysis is that it reveals that the information they obtain from our Echo devices ends up, not only in the hands of Amazon, but in those of about forty third-party companies specializing in advertising marketing: there is "solid evidence that smart speaker interactions are used for the purpose of targeting ads, and that this ad targeting involves significant data exchange between multiple parties«.
On the other hand, from Amazon they pointed out that “many of the conclusions of this research are based on inaccurate inferences or speculation by the authors, and do not accurately reflect how Alexa works”, so he recalled that “we are not in the business of selling our customers' personal information and we do not share Alexa requests with advertising networks”.
The firm continues its statement indicating that "[...] in a similar way to what one would experience if they made a purchase on Amazon.es or requested a song through Amazon Music, if one asks Alexa to buy kitchen towels or play a song on Amazon Music, the record of such purchase or playback may serve to define relevant ads to show on Amazon or other sites where Amazon serves ads. Customers can opt out of receiving advertisements from Amazon based on your interests at any time on our website”
As always, at this point It's time to dust off our faith and believe one or the other based on what seems most convincing to us.