Alexa - application to have it listening all the time... here we go

[Saracen]

I find it interesting, if you said to the general public; we want to put cameras and microphones all over your house(smart speakers, smart tvs with cameras, children's toys, baby monitors, doorbells and even robot vacuums with cameras) and collate information on you, there would be an outcry about civil or human rights.

And with 16 million smart speakers shipped in the last quarter of 2017, and 56 million units this year(projected), it just shows you how ubiquitos smart devices are becoming. But because it's packaged as essential to our lives, and those without 'smart' devices are perceived as having lower social status, people don't seem to see the potential intrusion by companies sharing data, and hackers who easily access these smart devices.

You missed the most invasive of the lot - smartphones. If the snooping of the OS doesn't get you, one or more apps you install will. And you carry it everywhere you go.

I honestly wonder how many people peruse permissions, or understand what some bland-sounding permissions and app T&C's actually authorise? Remember, to understand what T&C's really give permission for, you have to consider not just what the initial "examples" allow, but what the developer's lawyers can convince a court some generic "and other commercial uses", or similar, means. Which, effectively, is damn near anything they want. The examples are there to nake it all seem harmless, and hide the real zinger added as an apparent afterthought.

I'm forced to conclude either :-

- people don't read them, or
- read them but don't understand what they're agreeing to, or
- read and understand, but either don't care, or at least, don't care enough.

[johnroe]

- people don't read them, or
- read them but don't understand what they're agreeing to, or
- read and understand, but either don't care, or at least, don't care enough.

It's not quite the wild west, but companies are exploiting what is an unregulated area because the public seem blase about their data, and those that regulate haven't caught up with modern tech models yet. I think companies probably employ specialists to write T&C , the brief being 'make sure they have no rights', but bury it all deep in an impenetrable text , so that anyone foolhardy enough to read it soon gets bored or confused.