Did you know that the smartphone in your hand is listening to everything you say? Find out how you can prevent it.
Today we live in the digital age. From waking up in the morning to sleeping at night most of the activities of our daily life are done only in digital form. There is no doubt that digitization has made human life much easier. But its negative aspects cannot be ignored either.
The Internet has evolved into a huge repository of information. Information related to any subject is just a click away from you. That means you can retrieve all the information with a single click on your smartphone. An update is now available for that too. Hands-free search with voice assistant. You can hire a 'virtual assistant' like Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana for you. Thus there is no need to touch the phone.
There are many such applications on your smartphone. Did you know that smartphone is listening to your every word that gives you every information when you ask?. Have you ever thought about this? First, find out which smartphone apps are listening to your words. As it is a matter of one's privacy one should pay extra attention.
How to identify eavesdropping apps?
Virtual assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, Amazon Alexa respond to certain words called “wake words”. So these assistant services always listen to you. Such apps buy access to your phone's 'microphone' from you upon installation. After that it will always listen to your speeches. Similarly, apps like Facebook and Instagram that provide video calling and audio calling services are always listening to you.
Wondering how? As already mentioned the microphone will ask for access while installing the apps. If you ignore it and give OK, your voice will be heard by those apps. Never give that access to apps that don't need a microphone. Check again after installing access to apps. If you have given access to unnecessary apps like camera and microphone, go to Settings and turn them off.
Android users
- - First open the Settings app on the smartphone and then click on Apps
- - Click on Permissions. It contains the access details you have given to the apps
- - After this you will see all permissions like camera, microphone, location, storage etc
- - Now click on microphone. It contains details of all apps that use your smartphone's microphone. Here you can revoke the access of all apps that you don't want to grant access to.
iPhone users
- - Open Settings on your smartphone and scroll down and click on Privacy & Security
- - Then click on the option on Microphone
- - Here you will find all apps that use your smartphone's microphone
- - At your discretion, you can block access to all apps you don't want to grant access to
How to block virtual assistant?
For Android users, go to Settings >> Apps >> General >> Assistant >> See all Assistant Settings >> Turn Off “Hey Google”. For iOS users, go to Settings >> Siri & Search >> Turn Off “Listen for Hey Siri”.
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