Have you heard of the Digital Personal Assistant, or do you use a Digital Personal Assistant on your device for your business and/or day to day life?
Digital Personal Assistants can be useful for managing reminders, shopping lists or requesting information like checking the weather forecast, examples of these include Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant and others.
These Digital Personal Assistants listen for their Prompt Words. In Google’s case it’s “Hey Google” before recording what you say and then acting on it, for example, “Hey Google, find (name of) street in Marton”, the Digital Personal Assistant then shows a map of the street on your device.
However, in the last 12 months, it has come to light that these Digital Personal Assistants have been listening to and recording all the time and then tailoring marketing to what has been said.
A Class-Action in the United States, saw two plaintiffs allege that they mentioned “Air Jordan” shoes and their iPhones then showed adverts for those shoes. Another claimed he received medical ads after discussing a specific surgical treatment with his doctor. (Forbes Article 6 January 2025)
If you are currently using or thinking about using a Digital Personal Assistant, we recommend keeping privacy and security front and centre of mind and never talk about or discuss anything sensitive and/or personal, including medical, family etc. where it can be heard by your Digital Personal Assistant.
It is possible with platforms, like Apple, Google Android etc. to turn off the Digital Personal Assistant feature if you aren’t using it or have privacy and/or security concerns.
If you’d like advice and/or help with any aspect of Digital Personal Assistants, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.