407 - Spooky Smart Speaker Technology
the latest tech i'm alexa i can answer your questions interviews and we are evolving and we are seeing an amazing opportunity that's happening accessibility accessibility is one of the core values it's even the part of the mission statement this is doubletap tv [Music] welcome to another edition of doubletap tv thank you guys so much for being here with us each and every single week if you want to get in touch please email us it is feedback ami.ca on all our social media where we're getting super hot and heavy stephen it is uh at doubletap canada and at doubletap.online i am mark of lalo in montreal as always joined by my mr friend co-host whatever you want to call yourself steven scott all the way in glasgow scotland stephen how are you feeling this week as we look towards halloween oh scary scary fingers gotta do scary fingers mark it doesn't work otherwise uh no i'm good i'm good uh thank you for using the word friend in there that was nice it was friendly it was welcoming unlike you you know season four i figured by now we we can call each other friends um exactly we've been to my house that's entirely up to them stephen listen you've been you've been at my house you you have drunk iron brew you're officially a member of the scottish family um and that is the scot and scottish family see what i did there am i am i lord am i lord do i get a tartan do i get it do i get a kill what's going on here how does this work no how we tell my demons no you get nothing not even a membership card you get more iron brew stephen as we enter this halloween stage of the season we wanted to talk about these spooky scary myths that are the smart speakers that live around some of our homes i mean my home is pretty much blanketed in amazon echoes i'm pretty sure you weren't saying very similarly equipped no no absolutely so why why do people say uh and attribute the word scary or spooky when it comes to these speakers i think that's because there's this impression and there's this myth in this rumor that these speakers are constantly listening to us they are eavesdropping they're learning stuff about us when we sleep do you really and you're down in the deeps of your gut believe that that to be true well let's hear from today's guest first and then we could decide right because if i'm honest i i came into this kind of splitting those two things up so in one hand yes the devices are listening but they're listening specifically for one word which might begin with a or o for you know okay the other one um i don't know if they're listening to everything we're saying for nefarious reasons i don't think they are and i don't think they're listening out to learn anything about us if they are learning anything about me it's that i like to laze around watch a ridiculous amount of netflix and eat a lot of chocolate i mean that's that's not there's not much learning going on here mark and that's actually partly jokingly for that reason i don't think they're listening to us because we're not that interesting as a human species you know smarter people than you and i have had this exact discussion before and this question has been posed directly to the amazons of the world and the googles of the world and the apples of the world and what the response has been uh pretty much in unison has been that no we're not listening however no no no no no but but wait but they also say that their search algorithms and the ai that's behind all this is so smart that it can with a degree of percentage of difference actually predict things that you're going to search for and your habits based on all the information they have on you so they don't even need to listen to know what you're thinking about they know us already that's true no that is true and actually the way and that's the other thing right you've got to think about if you're buying from one particular place all the time and you're continually feeding information through searches through product buying all that aspect of it then absolutely the computer is building a picture of you and the kind of things you want like mike i'm sure you're the same but my feed on certain big stores you know like amazon is all computer parts it's all monitors is hard drives is you know all those things because that's what i'm always usually searching for i'm forever looking for a new laptop even though i've maybe found the one i like i'll always want another one so you know i'm always getting oh you might i mean i love when you get this i love when you get the notification that says amazon i think you'd like a new laptop i know how did you know but it's because that's what i've been searching for that's what i'm always looking for so that's you know i think we are all to blame for this um and for that reason i don't think we should worry about it maybe we should put together a couple social experiments where we live a week without technology that has a microphone and see what the changes might be or if there are any changes whatsoever in the habits or the results that uh end up in our search engine um you know we're talking we're talking about these smart speakers we're talking about you know whether they listen to us or not and how they can kind of predictively know what we're into and we equate this with being scary because people are scared of this and and then this is how we get to halloween this is being our halloween episode obviously we're not yeah but hang on but just i know we're gonna get into this in more detail but the thing is mark and this is what gets me people always say this i have a friend who said the same thing i'm not buying a smart speaker because it's always listening to me and i don't like that around my house i don't like it around my children this was the same guy who was sitting with a smart tv he was just showing off which had a voice remote and a smartphone next to him it's got to get real here right yeah well and this is this is why we've made that connection between spooky scary smart speakers but now we're going to make that connection and we're going to make that leap to are there ways to secure this stuff and thanks to companies like the one in which our next guest um works at which is nordvpn we're going to be talking about ways to secure not only your smart speaker but all your devices so that maybe you can get a little bit of a degree of some kind of privacy maybe okay well look i don't know we'll see because uh justine is going to be joining us all the way from lithuania shortly uh risk manager at nord security really looking forward to hearing what she has to say um but i do think things are going to get very scary around to your mark sorry i had to i just had to do that it is doubletap tv he is stephen scott i am marca flallo thank you guys for being here each and every single week again if you want to get involved in the conversation we are so excited for you to do that is feedback at ami dot ca and of course on all our social media whether that be facebook twitter instagram you name it it is uh doubletap canada doubletap dot online we take a quick break and come back with justine from nord for more great double tap tv content visit ami dot ca slash double tap this is double tap tv welcome back to doubletap tv thank you guys again for being here each and every single week i won't remind you how to get involved because i do that so often and you guys must be so annoyed by it by now uh i am markiplier with steven scott by my side steven we have our guest standing by did you say from she's from lithuania that's right yeah all the way from lithuania justina is here i'm not going to attempt to pronounce your second name justine i don't want to offend you but you are the risk manager at nord security thanks first of all for being with us here on doubletap tv um this is probably the scariest question we can ask you how safe are our smart speakers so um whenever thinking about smart speakers it is very important to understand that they actually take notes of everything you tell them uh to do or to search for so that is how we create that kind of a portrait a profile of ourselves to the companies that manufacture those devices so the data that they gathered is stored and is later used by them to help those companies those same companies to sell more devices to users or even for marketers to target their audiences and all the data that they collect and gather we never are sure how it is being used and that is one of the main issues also smart speakers are not that common in some countries just because at the moment they support quite a limited number of languages however it is just a matter of time until smart speakers learn all the major languages and further increase their user base at the moment in english-speaking countries they are they are already very popular so for example our research shows that in united kingdom 42 of households are already using smart speakers which is a significant amount okay but what about the theory that we talked about a little bit earlier on the show where you know these devices are are listening to us all the time and they listen to everything we say whether it be our smart speaker maybe even our smartphone and then suddenly we see advertisements everywhere in our social media feeds for those products that we just happen to be talking about throughout the household uh is it listening to those keywords and then acting upon it in some shape way or shape or form uh so it is it is a possibility that it definitely could be the case because as i mentioned the uh they are not really listening to uh they shouldn't be recording and using that information when we are not really uh intending to talk with them however sometimes it ends up recording you by accident and even though you know the claim that they are analyzing quite a small amount of that data for marketing research we can never be fully sure about this information so uh that is one of the possibilities and one of the concerns that we always have to be aware about that you know they are actually listening to that information let's bring this to data leaks because there are so many instances we're hearing these days about one company having a data leak and our personal information being being out there on the dark web or another company or banks i mean facebook has happened so many times i can't even remember is our personal information safe even though we're talking about stuff and and these devices are quote unquote listening to us is our personal information safe or should we be securing it so yes unfortunately no security system is fully secure so that's why we hear about the leaks from businesses customer data breaches all the time so one of examples is in 2019 google reported the leak of 1000 smart speaker recordings uh and the worrying part is that 153 of those 15 percent of those recordings were actually the conversations that should have never been recorded so the activation okay google was never given and those were quite uh you know not intended conversations to be recorded so um and in addition to that you know smart speakers can be a part a point of vulnerability themselves so we should really be always cautious and responsible about what information we tell them and what are we talking about next to it and in your view are smart speakers more vulnerable than say smartphones smart tvs uh well it's a good question and i mean the main vulnerability of a smart speaker itself is that they are usually connected in our homes with multiple devices so it is enough for one device to get reached and to for the whole system to be in danger and jeopardized so uh hacking a smart speaker itself is really not that easy because they're usually voice controlled uh and so you the hacker would actually need to be quite close to the smart speaker in order for for you to hack it um but however cyber criminals are always very uh up to the technology as well so uh what they are doing at the moment they created this uh malware which which which can help your smart speaker by just basically infecting the smartphone that is being connected to your uh to your smart speaker so what happens is uh once the phone gets malware from the infected app criminals can access your command recordings and thus hack your smart speaker and since all the devices are connected to smart speakers it jeopardizes as i mentioned almost the entire system and it can you know compromise the safety of your whole household uh including security cameras and your internet connection stephen justine i feel like we're going down this this like dark dark conversation here but i want to bring this to a positive light so let's take a quick break this is double tap tv we're talking all about the scariness and the spookiness around this halloween season about our smart speakers and our smart devices uh let's take a quick break again feedback at ami.c if you want to get involved in the conversation check out our social media it is at doubletap canada on twitter and at doubletap.online on all other social media we're going to come back with justine and get to continue this conversation and see if we can spin this to a happier tone it is doubletap tv for more great doubletap tv content visit ca double tap this is double tap tv we are back on doubletap tv thank you again for being here each and every single week get involved in the conversation the email address is feedback at ami dot ca let us know your thoughts do you think that your devices are listening to you and are you gonna do something about it well i am markaflalo and steven scott is by my side each and every single week and we're joined this week by justina from nordvpn as they call it in canada or nord security talking all about you know how we can lock down these devices and and i as i alluded to before we went to a break justina is there any positive spin here any positive news that can come out of this like the things we're talking about here sound pretty bleak and and pretty negative in terms of losing our information and personal information especially of course smart speakers are still very helpful and very uh an important part of many households as i mentioned and there are ways to protect yourself so uh i don't want to be to for the listeners to be overwhelmed with all the information i'm about to give so just know that if you do at least a few of the steps that i'm about to say you're already quite closer to being a bit more secure and yeah we can always improve our cyber security by you know just thinking about what kind of information we we give to the companies and so one of the best things you can do with smart speakers i think the simplest ones is just to review the default settings when you get the device so just review the privacy and security settings and turn off the recording that's already one big step you know to to be in control of your own data uh one more thing you can do is just to mute the microphone whenever you don't want to be heard by your device okay so let's talk about some of the solutions that are actually out there nord security obviously has nord vpn so i guess let's start with the basics what exactly is a vpn i know it stands for virtual private network but what is it doing so it kind of creates this encrypted tunnel for your data which protects your online identity by hiding your ip addresses and also uh it's not only very good when you are trying to protect your household it's a great tool when you're traveling so with vpn you can connect quite safely to a public wi-fi hotspots and just protect your data all the all the way at home and when traveling now as you're saying your company provides vpn services um but you do more than that tell us about nordvpn so well nordvpn is one of the world's most advanced vpn services and so it provides double vpn encryption malware blocking and only on overvpn so uh this product is actually very user friendly it's it offers one of the best prices on the market and has over 5 000 servers in 60 countries and one of the key features that we are very proud of is nordvpn has a zero log policy which means all the information everything you do on the internet stays with you and i noticed while looking into your company that you offer a range of other products as well such as a password locker yes that's correct so uh northpass is also a product for individual consumers that it's a password manager that helps you to store all your passwords safely in one account and also generate passwords for your new accounts so it really simplifies the tasks and increase your cyber security a lot we also have other products who are some uh some of them are more to the businesses like nordvpn teams and um also nor locker when you can store your actual data i want to get a personal here justina because i've got two young kids uh you know one's almost 12 one is nine is it safe for me to be putting one of these smart speakers in their rooms because right now they have them i would say yes uh it is always you know good to uh think about you know how what kind of information you want the smart speaker to hear and and to hear about you as we talked so what kind of information you don't really want to be shared with a device you should just try to avoid staying next to it so always think about you know what is the priority to have that device for example from your parent's standpoint in your child's bedroom do you want that kind of information accidentally being recorded and probably stored in this process and if the answer is no then probably you should consider just you know keeping it in a different place justina thank you so much for coming on and terrifying us all with this news mark i don't know about you but i am i am terrified um i think i'm going to go around my house i mean it will take a while but i'll unplug all these devices and i will throw them away immediately what about you i think i'm just i'm going to just cut the cable to my internet and just that's it we're done the fiber is done to my house there is no smart speaker that can connect to anything sadly i think my kids are smart enough now they will find some way around it they're going to learn how to hack onto a neighbor's wi-fi or they're going to use their my phone or something's going to happen but yeah i'm absolutely terrified which is uh very fitting a couple days before halloween here i think that's the problem isn't it we've become so reliant on these devices they're not just fun toys they are actually functional devices that we live you know in some cases we control our homes with so you know it is part of our lives now and to get rid of it would be like taking away my smartphone and you're not getting that mark a story i told a couple a couple weeks ago on doubletap canada uh on ami audio was you know my network went belly up on a weekend and it was just an auto update that i left on and it wiped everything out i had to reset everything up from scratch it took me two days and i was finally getting my shower voice activated again my heated floors voice activated again my whole smart home came crumbling down and i was just desperate to get it back up and running but i think that's that's a little sad now uh no well i think i think the shower perhaps everything else i'll let you away with um but i get it you know auto update is possibly the next scary topic we'll do next halloween don't make fun of my shower uh if you had a shower that could keep the temperature the entire time that you're in there and you're not worrying about making it hotter or cooler and you had perfect temperature the entire time i bet you you would jump for that in a second i've got that i just don't touch the temperature thing solves the problem yeah i've saved a fortune they just save to smart or flallow i know i try i try thank you guys for being here again this week on double tap tv of course thanks to our guest justina uh on behalf of justina and steven scott i am mark of flallow please get in touch with us feedback at ami dot ca our email address on twitter we are at doubletap canada and all the social media is at doubletap dot online we keep the conversation going and we chat with you again next week here on doubletap tv hosted by markaflalo and steven scott editing jordan steves and mark aflalo voice over anna vicino integrated described video specialist ron rickford coordinating producer jennifer johnson director production kara nye director programming brian perdue vp content development and programming john melville president and ceo david arrington copyright 2021 accessible media inc
2021-11-01 04:27
