Security News > 2020 > February > Smart speakers mistakenly eavesdrop up to 19 times a day
2020-02-25 11:47
Researchers have found some speakers activating by mistake up to 19 times each day.
The researchers wanted to simulate real-world conditions, so they set up a variety of smart speakers with embedded virtual assistants and played them 125 hours of audio from various Netflix shows ranging from The Office to The Big Bang Theory and Narcos.
They found that devices would activate up to 19 times each day on average.
Every show caused at least one device to wake up, and most shows woke up multiple devices.
This could be due to some randomness in the way smart speakers detect wake words, or the smart speakers may learn from previous mistakes and change the way they detect wake words.