Turner Business

TSYS School associate professor Alfredo Perez and colleagues from the University of Kentucky and Dalton State College recently reviewed the privacy policies of six popular electronic devices, including two voice-activated intelligent assistant devices, namely the Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home.  The results, published in their study forthcoming in Security and Privacy , indicate that both of the voice-activated intelligent assistant devices adhere to the manufacturers’ privacy policies when the user’s voice is collected through the devices.  However, the researchers also found that future policy changes, along with the use of user consent agreements, may adversely affect consumers’ privacy when the manufacturers fail to provide users with an avenue to opt out of their data collection practices.  This particular issue is most likely to occur in situations where a company’s Internet of Things (IoT) policies are embedded within its general privacy policies, or where the IoT policies are