Thinking of it, it’s quite frightening to think that our devices may be secretly spying on us. In the article “Smart Talking: Are our devices threatening our privacy ?” by James Vlahos, he talks about how virtual assistant devices may be listening to our conversations when not directed to. I was intrigued with this article because I’ve wondered this myself. Have you ever had a conversation about a certain food you’ve been craving and later that week an advertisement for it posts up on your phone when scrolling through social media? This has happened to me many times, not only with food but with anything that is purchasable. I sometimes think that devices like our phones, computers, and television have little monitors that are operated to listen to us in order to promote certain items they know we may be interested in.
Vlahos also brought up another matter that has crossed my mind before. At the beginning of the article, he provides a story about a murder that took place in 2015. The investigators noticed an Amazon Echo in the area of the crime scene and decided to get a secret search warrant to review any recordings that might have been done during the day but Amazon rejected with fear of putting their “privacy implications at stake”. So if you were to think about this situation, they could have put an innocent man in jail if the recordings were crucial for the investigation. I thought about devices and investigators doing this but it never crossed my mind that these companies could possibly be sued if an investigation were to reveal that they had been listening to us.
Although it’s scary, I believe that we are all aware that these devices are either watching us or listening to us but we ignore that idea because we value our devices too much and/or are addicted to them. Millions of people use amazon products or buy products using Amazon so if this idea of them invading our privacy were to spread, how many people do you think would actually boycott this company? Would the company be in danger of losing billions of dollars? Or would it just blow over after a few weeks ?
I truly agree with you that we all know our devices are "secretly" watching and listening to us throughout our daily lives. Personally I have also had incidents where I am searching for something on the web then later see it being advertised to me on a completely different app. Not only that, but responding to one of your stated questions I do not believe our society would boycott Amazon if it were to get caught for invading our privacy. The reason for this is that we simply prefer to benefit ourselves or continue to use the things that are more convenient for us rather than focusing on the bad.
ReplyDelete-Juliana Cervantes
I agree with you. It is a little creepy to think that our devices that we use are listening to us. The company might have been doing this to promote products to us.However, I do not believe that the company would be in danger. As you said, people love to buy products, I do not think they would just boycott or sue anyone the company as a whole. Although, we do not necessary know who exactly is listening or are spying on us through our devices, and I do not really think that this is right. Every person should want privacy, and we should be given that.
ReplyDeleteI too have also had plenty occasions were I talk about something and an ad comes up about it later on. I think a lot of people thought it was freaky at first, but just slowly kind of forgot about. I don't really think it is right that there was an echo at the crime scene but, there is only so much you can do at this point. Technology is everywhere and it keeps listening to us whether we like it or not.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all the points that you made about our devices listening to us.I think that most people who have social media have probably experienced having a conservation about maybe a store or a game then you could just be scrolling through Instagram or another social media platform and then an ad pops up for the exact thing you were just talking about. I know that I have experienced this before and I would get totally freaked out. So does this mean that our devices are listening to us? Should we be worried about it?
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