Smart Speakers May Compromise User Privacy
Smart speakers provide amazing convenience, allowing you to play your favorite music or order toilet paper using a simple voice command. However, this convenience comes at a price – the compromise of user confidentiality, which many consumers are not even aware of.
Umar Ikbal, Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Sciences and Engineering at the Makelvi University of Washington University in St. Louis, revealed that Amazon uses data interactions with smart speakers to determine user interests and then targets personalized advertising based on these interests. This information was not previously disclosed by Amazon.
The research group presented their work on October 26 at the ACM conference on the measurement of the Internet in Montreal. The purpose of the study was to shed light on the type of information captured by smart speakers, how it is transmitted to third parties, and how it is used by these parties.
To analyze the data collected by smart devices, the team created various “characters” with interests in specific categories. The researchers then measured the data collection by intercepting network traffic and observed the advertisements targeted at each “character”.
The team discovered that up to 41 advertisers share or sell their data to Amazon, which in turn shares it with 247 other third parties. Additionally, Amazon fails to disclose that interactions with smart speakers are used to create user profiles for targeted advertising.
“Unfortunately, surveillance has become a business model of the internet,” stated Ikbal. He also mentioned that consumer protection authorities such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the USA and the European organization of consumers in the EU have shown significant interest in the study’s findings.
Ikbal emphasized the importance of consumers being aware of the amount of data they transmit when inviting smart devices into their homes, as well as how this information can be utilized.