People Who Buy Smart Speakers Have Given Up on Privacy, Researchers Find
Smart speakers raise a number of privacy questions, which owners are choosing to just shrug off
By Kaleigh Rogers
Nov 26 2018, 2:58pm
Image: Pexels
If you find always-listening smart devices creepy, but bought an Amazon Echo anyway, you’re not alone. A recent study from researchers at the University of Michigan found that people who own smart speakers are aware of the risks, but feel resigned to the idea that the erosion of privacy is now a fact of life.
“What was really concerning to me was this idea that ‘it’s just a little bit more info you give Google or Amazon, and they already know a lot about you, so how is that bad?’” said Florian Schaub, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan School of Information and a co-author of the study. “It’s representative of this constant erosion of what privacy means and what our privacy expectations are.”
Smart home devices—like internet-connected speakers, TVs, and microwaves—have been involved in multiple privacy scandals. This year, a couple’s private conversation was recorded by their smart speaker and then sent to a random contact. In 2015, people discovered that a buried line in the privacy policy for Samsung’s smart TVs meant that everything you say could be captured and sent to a third party. Like all internet-connected tech, such devices are also susceptible to data breaches or hacks.
Yet despite knowledge of these risks, many people say they’re resigned to the idea that we’re going to be spied on and there’s nothing we can do about it.
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being the "remote" for everything from the TV to the fans/ACs since there were no remotes. We did have mechanical timers all over the house though for the lights (and I have many myself in my household).
I remember when my sister's godparents bought one of the early VCRs (toploader) with a "wired" remote - I think it had to have been in the late '70s/early '80s (they were always "early adopters" ) and the cord was so short that they had a chair next to the shelf with the VCR and TV meaning... you might as well have just used the buttons that were right there! 
And no, I never had a "Clapper" either. IMHO, that was ridiculous but the commercials were hilarious.
my city (Philly) didn't even start discussing awarding franchises until 1984 (they split the city in quarters) and we didn't get any until 1989 after some neighbors refused to have the cableco run house-to-house wiring across their house, so the company skipped the rest of the block (and the city had to go around and sue for easement and right-of-way while we were chasing the cable guy down the street to get signed up and eventually get wired). I think it was in '83 when we finally got a tv with a big honkin' remote (probably took a 9 volt batt).
And of course, most of the channels weren't scrambled back then so technically, you didn't even need to do anything with the box, you could go direct to the RF jack (or get a little adapter thing that would connect to the antenna screws and then you could screw the cable to the adapter). But their early boxes required a phone cord connected to do the pay per view, so that became a long cord getting to a phone jack.
