Privacy Concerns Over Smart Speakers

Use these links to jump to different sections:

• Are Home Smart Speakers Always Listening?
• What Can You Do to Protect Your Consumer Privacy?
• Find Experienced Legal Help for Data Privacy Issues

Every American has the fundamental right to privacy in their own home, including freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, as dictated by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Smart home technologies such as Amazon Echo (the hardware device that the Amazon Alexa voice assistant operates on), Google Home, Apple HomePod, and others allow homeowners to control various features of their home and even browse the web using only their voice.

Despite the convenience of these devices, many users have privacy concerns about how their personal data—voice recordings, searches, credit card info, etc.—is accessed and used by technology companies.

Are Home Smart Speakers Always Listening?

Yes and no. Smart home devices have a wake word, such as “Alexa” or “Hey Google.” When activated with the wake word, the device begins to record and process the speaker’s voice commands. So, while a device is always listening for its wake word, it is not always recording.

Though devices aren’t actively recording all the time, they do store audio recordings of queries to learn the sound of users’ voices, how specific users pronounce words and phrases, and to further improve speech recognition. However, these audio files can be manually deleted.

What Can You Do to Protect Your Consumer Privacy?

Each homeowner must decide what they are comfortable inviting into their home and whether the convenience is worth it. There are practical steps individuals can take with their own devices, such as strengthening privacy settings and deleting voice recordings.

When it comes to legal frameworks for data privacy, things aren’t as straightforward. Unlike the European Union, which implemented its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, the United States has no comprehensive data privacy protection law. A handful of states, notably California, have enacted robust data privacy laws, but at the federal level, the main legal protections come from policies developed in the 1970s regarding third-party providers. According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, current U.S. privacy laws are “ill-suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.”

Find Experienced Legal Help for Data Privacy Issues

If you have reason to believe your privacy has been violated, you may want to contact a skilled data privacy lawyer or a data security specialist. For more information on this area of law, see our overviews of consumer law and technology transactions law.