Special report: Who’s watching you now?

Sound-activated technology has become a part of our everyday lives. For Amazon Echo user Rebecca Singer, it’s a big part of hers.

“Our daughter, Maddie, uses her for homework, which she’s actually really awesome with. And my husband’s always fact-checking, so we can always ask Alexa.”

But are we relying on it too much?

Tyler Hardison, senior solutions architect for Redhawk Cyber Security in Bend,, said, “The phones, the tablets, the devices where they’re having you call out,those trigger words are what start the recordings, for the most part.”

We reached out to both Apple and Amazon to learn more about their privacy policies. Apple said, “Siri is associated with your specific device, rather than your Apple I-D. These predictions are kept on your device, not in the cloud, so the information is protected by all the safeguards that are built in.”.

Amazon said, ” Once the word is detected, the device will start streaming the audio to the cloud. The audio is not recorded o the device. Echo and Alexa were designed with privacy and security as part of the design, not an afterthought. It has to be built into the hardware and other service, and you need to think about privacy as as series of layers.”

But there is a concern that other apps you may have downloaded still could be paying attention.

“So it is entirely possible for a malicious app to sit in the background and listen in,” said Hardison.

But for now, those who are still worried about whether your devices are listening to you all the time can always turn off these voice activated programs through the settings application on your smart phone or tablet under Siri or OK Google.

And in the future, the constant growth of technology means it could become even easier to access things you want to keep private and confidential, so being aware of who’s listening, when and for what reasons will become even more important..