Earlier quoted context omitted.
Come now, on a tech and hacking website of all places we should all be better informed than this. There is a voice activation only chip tied directly into the lights that only listens for commands. Once the activation is heard it sends it off to the servers to get processed etc. With everyone scrutinizing the web traffic around them trying to prove NSA/Google spying with them we'd definitely have found something by n…
I can't find the article, but there was a post where someone turned on the Audible Alert of when it was listening and it began listening for a lot of times. They also said they found a lot of recordings in their Google History that really shouldn't have been there. Here's another article about the history: https://qz.com/526545/googles-been-quietly-recording-your-vo...
Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
141–150 of 178 posts
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which makes WAY more sense than a range outside of human hearing that OP implicated ("inaudible"). Expecting TV's to play tones outside the range people can hear is ridiculous.
TV channels already contain inaudible-sound identifiers. Nielsen has people put listeners in their homes, and uses the identifiers to track which channels are getting played.
You can't count on a TV being able to reproduce sounds below about 100Hz or above about 16kHz. The position of the speakers on the back of the TV means you're likely to get a lot of weird phase effects and many TVs have quite heavy audio DSP to compensate for the inadequacy of their speakers. Any hidden signals will need to be in-band and low bit rate with a high level of redundancy.
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
TV channels already contain inaudible-sound identifiers. Nielsen has people put listeners in their homes, and uses the identifiers to track which channels are getting played.
> and uses the identifiers to track which channels are getting played. I don't think they're using infrasound for that. I think they use a technology similar to Shazam where it just analyzes the sound to determine what's on.
They are, it's one of the reasons they [Nielsen] bought Arbitron back in 2013. The PPM devices use low-frequency tones encoded into the audio stream at the time of broadcast.
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#144I can't recommend highly enough that everyone at least turn on the audible sound when their assistants are listening. At a minimum you should know the kinds of things that end up triggering the device. There's a really wide area of detection and it's interesting to see where that is. I would also recommending changing your default word at a minimum. Then again, I might also recommend ditching the device entirely but…
I want to get rid of my alexa, but my wife uses it as a kitchen timer. We literally dont use it for anything else. Might get one of those philips light sets since our living room is weird... Tbh, id rather not use alexa..
That's literally the only thing I use "OK, Google" on my phone for, too.
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which makes WAY more sense than a range outside of human hearing that OP implicated ("inaudible"). Expecting TV's to play tones outside the range people can hear is ridiculous.
TV channels already contain inaudible-sound identifiers. Nielsen has people put listeners in their homes, and uses the identifiers to track which channels are getting played.
Sometimes they're fairly audible; try listening closely to re-runs of Arrested Development as an example, there are scenes with fairly loud high-pitched noises which I believe were listened for by some phone apps to try estimating viewership.
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#146DolphinAttack: Inaudible Voice commands: https://youtu.be/21HjF4A3WE4
Can't they just limit the activation frequency? Seems easy enough
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#147Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#148I can't recommend highly enough that everyone at least turn on the audible sound when their assistants are listening. At a minimum you should know the kinds of things that end up triggering the device. There's a really wide area of detection and it's interesting to see where that is. I would also recommending changing your default word at a minimum. Then again, I might also recommend ditching the device entirely but…
> I can't recommend highly enough that everyone at least turn on the audible sound when their assistants are listening. How do I do that for Google home?
The Google Home app. I remember it being under accessibility.
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to get rid of my alexa, but my wife uses it as a kitchen timer. We literally dont use it for anything else. Might get one of those philips light sets since our living room is weird... Tbh, id rather not use alexa..
That's literally the only thing I use "OK, Google" on my phone for, too.
Siri timer-only user chiming in
Re: Alexa and Siri Can Hear Hidden Commands
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't find the article, but there was a post where someone turned on the Audible Alert of when it was listening and it began listening for a lot of times. They also said they found a lot of recordings in their Google History that really shouldn't have been there. Here's another article about the history: https://qz.com/526545/googles-been-quietly-recording-your-vo...
Are you talking about the Google Home Minis? Because that was a hardware defect with its capacitive sensors that caused them to completely remove the feature: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16462572/...
I think this was what I was thinking about.