Connected speakers and voice assistants: what privacy watches?

Some models also offer to record samples of one's own voice in order to access differentiated services, personalized for each user of the device (this is called voice biometrics).

Some speakers record user requests locally, others send them to remote servers. In all cases, the query history and all associated data (date, time, account name...) are kept on the device (or servers).

Faced with this technology, the National Commission of Informatics and Freedoms (Cnil) recalls 3 points of vigilance concerning:

• Confidentiality of the exchanges (in permanent standby, the speaker can activate and record a conversation incidentally as long as it has captured what would be the keyword putting it in operation);
• the advertising profiling of users (fueled by the different interactions of each with the assistant: time of the rising, purchases, centers of interest, cultural tastes...);
• the absence of a screen (which makes it more difficult to verify the traces recorded, to judge the relevance of the answers given or even to have access to answers from other sources).