Don’t let the likes of Amazon Echo and Google home invade your privacy. Here’s how...

If you have an Amazon Echo or Google home, you probably ask it to shut down your light, play some jazz, news, weather, whatever. And the world becomes easy. But you know what, that little machine is not only recording what you say but might have access to your browser history. This is not new my friend, many websites have been doing this for years and these gadgets are just following the trend.

The right to privacy is a bedrock democratic principle, and people anticipate that the government will guarantee their safety. With the introduction of the domestic surveillance programs (some you know about-some you don't), the battle to discover a harmony amongst privacy and security has gone up against a more noteworthy urgency.

Where are those files sent and how?

As you speak those magic words, the files are recorded but they do need an internet connection to be sent to the real brains behind the technology. As the files are uploaded over cloud, the server generates a response and that’s how it goes.

Why are they doing it?

There's a base on how voice assistants function. Listening to what you say before a wake word is fundamental to the whole idea of those words. Audio pre-recording helps systems handle requests immediately. Without a livened ear for that Alexa, OK Google, these assistants would require activation buttons.

How to stop them

Press the mute button and that’ll disable your device from listening anything. There’s no other way for now, but soon we’ll see something like an incognito mode for these home assistants.

For a permanent stopping of the snoop-tales (for Google Home), try disabling your audio or video recording from here. But let me warn you, it’ll make your device a standing rock (doing nothing) for some time.

For Alexa, just press the mute button or bare the pain for a while.