Consumer concerns about being connected

Just saw an interesting article on Gear Brain

Covers a consumer survey about being connected and particularly with IoT devices. What’s interesting is that those surveyed were technically savvy (70% were self-described as intermediate or advanced with computers, and 83% said they could set up their own router), yet the survey found:

1)    68 percent of consumers expressed concern about security risks such as viruses, malware and hackers;
2)    65 percent of consumers were concerned over data collected by device manufacturers being inappropriately used or stolen; and
3)    51 percent of consumers said they are also anxious about privacy breaches.

These concerns are quite understandable, since we as consumers tend to give away many of our data rights in return for free services and software.

People have asked me if embedded speech and other embedded technologies will continue to persist if our cloud connections get better and faster, and the privacy issues are one of the reasons why embedded is critical.

This is especially true for “always on” devices that listen for triggers; if the always on listening is in the cloud, then everything we discuss around the always on mics goes into the cloud to be analyzed and potentially collected!