skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
Attention:The NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR) system and access will be unavailable from 7:00 AM ET to 7:30 AM ET on Friday, April 24 due to maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.


Title: Privacy Controls for Always-Listening Devices
Intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) and other voice-enabled devices already form an integral component of the Internet of Things and will continue to grow in popularity. As their capabilities evolve, they will move beyond relying on the wake-words today's IVAs use, engaging instead in continuous listening. Though potentially useful, the continuous recording and analysis of speech can pose a serious threat to individuals' privacy. Ideally, users would be able to limit or control the types of information such devices have access to. But existing technical approaches are insufficient for enforcing any such restrictions. To begin formulating a solution, we develop a systematic methodology for studying continuous-listening applications and survey architectural approaches to designing a system that enhances privacy while preserving the benefits of always-listening assistants.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1801501
PAR ID:
10175454
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
New Security Paradigms Workshop
Page Range / eLocation ID:
78 to 91
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Intelligent voice assistants, and the thirdparty apps (aka “skills” or “actions”) that power them, are increasing in popularity and beginning to experiment with the ability to continuously listen to users. This paper studies how privacy concerns related to such always-listening voice assistants might affect consumer behavior and whether certain privacy mitigations would render them more acceptable. To explore these questions with more realistic user choices, we built an interactive app store that allowed users to install apps for a hypothetical always-listening voice assistant. In a study with 214 participants, we asked users to browse the app store and install apps for different voice assistants that offered varying levels of privacy protections. We found that users were generally more willing to install continuously-listening apps when there were greater privacy protections, but this effect was not universally present. The majority did not review any permissions in detail, but still expressed a preference for stronger privacy protections. Our results suggest that privacy factors into user choice, but many people choose to skip this information. 
    more » « less
  2. Intelligent voice assistants may soon become proactive, offering suggestions without being directly invoked. Such behavior increases privacy risks, since proactive operation requires continuous monitoring of conversations. To mitigate this problem, our study proposes and evaluates one potential privacy control, in which the assistant requests permission for the information it wishes to use immediately after hearing it. To find out how people would react to runtime permission requests, we recruited 23 pairs of participants to hold conversations while receiving ambient suggestions from a proactive assistant, which we simulated in real time using the Wizard of Oz technique. The interactive sessions featured different modes and designs of runtime permission requests and were followed by in-depth interviews about people's preferences and concerns. Most participants were excited about the devices despite their continuous listening, but wanted control over the assistant's actions and their own data. They generally prioritized an interruption-free experience above more fine-grained control over what the device would hear. 
    more » « less
  3. null (Ed.)
    Abstract Voice-activated commands have become a key feature of popular devices such as smartphones, home assistants, and wearables. For convenience, many people configure their devices to be ‘always on’ and listening for voice commands from the user using a trigger phrase such as “Hey Siri,” “Okay Google,” or “Alexa.” However, false positives for these triggers often result in privacy violations with conversations being inadvertently uploaded to the cloud. In addition, malware that can record one’s conversations remains a signifi-cant threat to privacy. Unlike with cameras, which people can physically obscure and be assured of their privacy, people do not have a way of knowing whether their microphone is indeed off and are left with no tangible defenses against voice based attacks. We envision a general-purpose physical defense that uses a speaker to inject specialized obfuscating ‘babble noise’ into the microphones of devices to protect against automated and human based attacks. We present a comprehensive study of how specially crafted, personalized ‘babble’ noise (‘MyBabble’) can be effective at moderate signal-to-noise ratios and can provide a viable defense against microphone based eavesdropping attacks. 
    more » « less
  4. Intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) have the potential to facilitate health information tasks among older adults and caregivers. However, when adopting these tools, older adults face a significant challenge balancing needs for support versus values, such as privacy and control. This paper explores older adults' expectations of IVAs that support collaborative health information tasks. We conducted semi-structured interviews with ten older adult-informal caregiver dyads and nine older adults who collaborate with formal caregivers to manage their health (n=29). To identify factors that influence supportive and non-supportive interactions in caregiving relationships, we use an existing model to examine collaborative care experiences within older adult-caregiver dynamics and perceptions of emerging IVAs that support similar activities. We learned that expectations of emerging IVA interactions overlap with those within human caregiving relationships. We discuss implications for designing IVAs for collaborative health information tasks that address needs for control, trust, transparency, and personability and the need to further explore designing for support versus care. 
    more » « less
  5. Voice-activated Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) such as Amazon Alexa offer a natural and realistic form of interaction that pursues the level of social interaction among real humans. The user experience with such technologies depends to a large degree on the perceived trust in and reliability of the IVA. In this poster, we explore the effects of a three-dimensional embodied representation of Amazon Alexa in Augmented Reality (AR) on the user’s perceived trust in her being able to control Internet of Things (IoT) devices in a smart home environment. We present a preliminary study and discuss the potential of positive effects in perceived trust due to the embodied representation compared to a voice-only condition. 
    more » « less