Beware: Amazon, Apple, Google Smart TVs And Voice Assistants Tracking Your Movements And Spying On What You Say

Amazon, Apple and Google voice assistants and smart TVs could find out if a person is cheating on their partner, a data expert has claimed.

Smart gadgets, which are used by one in ten people around the UK, can harvest enough data to work out the dynamics of a relationship, they say.

They have the potential to record saucy conversations and analyse location data to discover secret affairs.

The virtual assistants can show when occupants are in a building, or for example, share a bedroom, by using sensor logs and smart meters. 

There is already ambiguity when it comes to these companies privacy policies and how they collect and use people’s data.

Recorded chats and locations could be harvested for research, stored in the cloud and sold on to third parties.

Speaking at a science conference in Washington, former government data adviser Professor Ashwin Machanavajjhala warned of the dangers of smart tech in the home, according to the Mirror.

‘Smart meters can tell you whether an individual is at home and what appliances are used,’ he said.

‘Smart light bulbs and WiFi access points can reveal occupancy. Social relationships between building occupants can be inferred by analysing sensor logs.

‘Smart TVs and voice assistants can pick up living room chatter, some of which may be shared with third parties.’

Professor Machanavajjhala said he refuses to have a smart speaker in his home for fear of privacy violations and grey areas over who your data is shared with.

‘I’m waiting for privacy protections to come in. We need to know what is being collected about us, whether or not we have anything to hide.’

‘Once data is on the cloud users lose control over it. There is little transparency about who it is shared with.’

Former US government data adviser Professor Ashwin Machanavajjhala warned of the dangers of smart tech in the home

Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, said last week that there is ‘no limit’ to how Amazon is storing and listening to private conversations, adding that these recordings ‘could potentially be used against you in a court of law or for other purposes.’

Amazon came under scrutiny last year when an Echo device recorded a family’s conversation and sent the audio file to a person in their contact list.

When contacted by the family, Amazon said it takes privacy ‘very seriously,’ but downplayed the incident as an ‘extremely rare occurrence.’

Meanwhile a report by UK lawmakers have accused Facebook of ‘intentionally and knowingly’ violating data privacy and competition laws.

The UK Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said that companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world.

A spokeperson for Amazon told MailOnline: ‘At Amazon customer trust is of the utmost importance, and we take privacy seriously.

‘By default, Echo devices are designed to only capture audio after it detects the wake word. Only after the wake word is detected does audio get streamed to the cloud, and the stream closes immediately after Alexa processes a customer request.

‘No audio is stored or saved on the device. Customers can also review and delete voice recordings in the Alexa App or by visiting amazon.co.uk/privacy.’

MailOnline has also contacted Google and Apple for comment but neither have replied.