Hacker News

Can’t say about Amazon and Google because I don’t have their devices, but if you read up on how Siri’s cue word works, you’ll see how it doesn’t “listen” to you all the time. It has 2 mechanisms in play, one that’s always ready to hear you call it, and the other that actually transmits the data it collects. Those 2 are decoupled to ensure the one waiting for the trigger/cue word is isolated and only works locally and does not collect or transmit what it’s hearing. Once you trigger it, the second mechanism comes in and then it’s fair game as whatever it hears can be collected and shared.

Having your phone listen to you all the time and transmit the info will cause an obvious drain on your battery and data. If that truly was the case, mobile security professionals would’ve sounded the alarm by now.

Bro, they don’t. The OS manages microphone access. If you allow it, yes, they may spy. But even then, the OS visible tells you via an icon that the microphone is used. It is the plain written truth, that we can not argue around. There has been a lot security research around this, stuff has been audited, Android is even open source, and no one has ever found even a hint of this being possible.

Echos and Google Homes are an entirely different story because they operate their microphones by design, their entire system works on always listening, and they don’t hide that.