I am getting some kind of tired when it comes to the comments that come in from
people on YouTube about how smart speakers are the biggest privacy risk to
them in their lives and how this is the worst thing they could ever have and
we're all idiots for doing it well I'm tired of it and I'm going to tell you
what the actual biggest privacy risk is for you
hello Automators thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian
from Automate Your Life and today I'm going to save you time in your life by
helping you focus on what is actually the right privacy risks in your life, and this video
is not intended to let Amazon Apple and Google off of the hook for their issues
with privacy in smart speakers it is not to say that that situation is perfect
and it is not to say they don't have more work to do but what it is to say is
this is the thing you need to be focusing on if you want to manage your
personal privacy now I asked this question on our community page I'm
having fun asking these kinds of questions too you oughta mater's and
seeing what their responses are back now I asked what the biggest risk was to
both security and privacy and many of you correctly pointed out that you know
what those are two disparate topics they need to be addressed separately and you
are absolutely right that's why we're only talking about
privacy today but the results still surprised me a little bit because I
still think that this device has a lot of inherent security risks to it in a
lot of different ways but that depends how you did how you define security I
guess but let's move in to what that device is I'm not going to make you wait
forever the device is your smartphone it is number one the worst privacy risk you
have and I'm about to tell you a ton of different ways that it is that number
one think about the amount of information you have put into that
device people talk about the amount of information we're giving a smart speaker
or a smart display there's a lot of information going into those devices
don't get me wrong but think about how much you have input that not just
your account information when it's apple or Google's operating system not just
the different applications although there's a lot of those and you've
probably done that a few times and put in some pretty questionable things into
apps but what about the messages the emails the different photographs the
camera on board and the microphone that's on board as well all of those
things are there and as well from a purely technical or hardware standpoint
these devices that we carry around with us on a daily basis they have all of the
hardware that a smart speaker has the microphone the camera they also have
this screen on there that you're constantly interacting with you're
touching you're putting your finger prints in them in some cases there's
facial recognition capabilities put into software on top of that they have a
massive amount of processing power and this has caused an incredible amount of
software or what the kids like to call apps these days they all of that is in
there and you're using all of it on a daily basis as you walk around anywhere
with the latest wireless technologies at your disposal for connection to any
network really in the world right now now let's think about this for a second
here's a smart speaker a smart display from Amazon and Google and Amazon and
Apple are all attacked on almost a weekly basis about their privacy policy
around those devices well I hate to tell you but the privacy policies really when
we're talking about Apple and Google they're exactly the same you know what
the difference is is that their voice assistant is getting recordings of your
voice when you do that and we'll talk about some of the mistakes there that
they've made but in in general the same thing is there on your phone you still
have that microphone and you now have these voice assistants now yes you can
turn those off but that's not the only application listening to what you say in
case you haven't noticed and this is one of the biggest issues I think with smart
phones right now and if anyone wants the a hot-button topic this is it right now
this is the thing that we should all be fighting about because right now on
almost every one of your phones I bet you Facebook Instagram are I don't know
any of ten different social media applications has access to your
microphone and your camera while you use it and you have granted those
permissions so it's it's what you have done you've said yeah I want to use that
application you already have all my account information and now you've given
them access to the microphone and the camera while you're in that application
and there are tutorials down below for correcting this on your smartphones
whether or not you have an Android or an iOS device you're going to find those
links down below and you should correct this today because what is happening
with all of that access is not only the mistakes that we see Google and Amazon
and Apple have made with their smart speakers where sometimes it's
accidentally recording you but it also the the the mistakes are happening
within these applications and in the case of Facebook this was I think this
was about a year ago where they basically admitted oh yeah you know what
you've been opening the app and in some cases we've had the camera and the
microphone on and we've managed to capture content now they came out said
this had happened and said they were correcting it right away and then did
but what about applications that aren't from companies as reputable as Facebook
and aren't as and I mean I just said that and I mean it aren't as reputable
as Facebook with privacy and security in your data
what about companies that are worse than that lots of the little companies that
are out there not necessarily under the same scrutiny scrutiny and the same
media pressures and people pressures that companies like Facebook and Google
and Amazon are on top of that there can be companies that are just a single
person and there can be companies that aren't even really companies putting out
applications that you downloaded on earphone and given access
not only to your account information that they forced you to sign up with but
your microphone your camera your location coordinates and other
personally identifiable information including things like looking through
your Wi-Fi network at which devices you have on there read a privacy policy once
in a while you're gonna find that more than one time so these applications are
doing all of this data mining and in a lot of cases you might even be accepting
a privacy policy from a person who doesn't care at all whether they follow
it they're just data mining and there's lots of examples of this on a smartphone
so compare that to a smart speaker it's not even close now I want to give you a
personal example of this going on and I've done testing to actually back this
up personally so about a year and a half ago sitting in a restaurant with a
friend and he wanted to talk to me about creating an app and a website for a
financial application basically and we sat there for quite some time I would
say about an hour and my iPhone was always sitting next to me and it again
it doesn't matter whether it's an iPhone or an Android
it matters what apps you have given permission to but that's sat there and
suddenly within about six hours of this hour-long conversation I started to
receive phone calls about app and website development help and there were
so many telemarketers that called me within a week I it was well over a
hundred and I mean it got to the point where I couldn't record a video or any
sort of screen recording on my phone because I was getting so many phone
calls so all of this eventually died I tried to ask questions how they had
gotten the information nobody was going to tell me they were just hanging up
once they figured out I I didn't want any of their help now I since that time
have done testing and I can tell you 100% there are certain applications out
there listening I can't narrow it down to
which one but then they go and they sell the information that they gathered from
your conversations to other companies that start to call you that start to
text you that start to email you whatever they have access to and this is
all through your cell phone the same holds true for your location and this
this situation is deepening right now as we go through this whole pandemic
situation this situation is deepening even more so you can't take a smart home
hub and you can't take a smart home speaker with you but you can take your
smart phone with you and then have that actually track your location and give it
to a number of applications and why I say this is deepening right now this is
something you guys should probably be paying attention to it's called contact
tracing and Google and Apple are absolutely being asked to do this in
conjunction with a number of companies and a number of governments to create
the ability for the least intrusive method of tracking your movements and
who you have come in contact with that's why it's called contact tracing when
you've come in contact with those people basically your phones are going to have
logged that you are in contact with them and they will be able to model outbreaks
your movements as well in terms of who you've come in contact with and there's
a ton of privacy concerns that surround something like that but we're all just
kind of going into that one gone okay it's it's needed and I'm not gonna
comment on whether or not it's necessary and I'm not going to con comment on
whether or not I think it's the right thing I'm just telling you that from a
privacy standpoint this is a joke this is a joke
these are small things that have actually been really well nailed down
but in the Wild West of applications and incredible technology in the palm of our
hands we have let go of the most important privacy concern out there and
to put one final nail in the coffin here the operating systems are incredibly
hard to maintain they're incredibly hard to keep up with in terms of
and both Apple and Google have had significant issues closing off
vulnerabilities in in some cases we see we hear about vulnerabilities that have
gone on for years at a time and there are cases of both in these devices so
not only have these vulnerabilities existed and they have impacted you or
could have impacted you they just nothing was done for many many years
while you were carrying them around so it is easily the device that you need to
focus on okay guys that's what I'm saying to you here I'm not saying we put
away our smartphones I'm not saying we get rid of them but if I am managing one
thing and I'm trying to use that time the wisest I can and that's what we're
about here on automate your life I'm going to really look at that smartphone
that I have in my possession and I'm really going to manage the privacy as
much as I can there so those tutorials are up on
screen right now go check one out make sure you are being secure or as secure
as you can with your smartphone and guys go ahead leave the comments down below
I'm sure there's people really upset about this video but it needed to be
said and I hope you guys take this with the right approach that you can go and
do something right now otherwise thanks for watching and of course don't hate
automate