Voice assistants – strategies for handling private information

In the latest in this series of posts, researchers from the EU-funded COMPRISE project write about privacy issues associated with voice assistants. They propose possible ways to maintain the privacy of users whilst ensuring that manufacturers can still access the quality usage data vital for improving the functionality of their products. "Tell me what you read and I tell you who you are." – Pierre de La Gorce Voice assistants, such as Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant, are becoming increasingly popular. Some users are, however, worried about their vocal interactions with these devices being stored in the cloud, together with a textual transcript of every spoken word. But is there an actual threat associated with the collection of these data? And if so, could such threats be prevented?