Beep. Buzz. Ring tone. The various phones and tablets in our house can get fairly annoying, even when they’re notifying rather than spying. I thought my wife and I were responsible parents who didn’t clutter our kids’ lives with these things; where have they all come from? My wife keeps her phone on ‘vibrate’ for her work messages, but I often ask her to “turn the darn thing off” because the persistent buzzing can be bothersome.
If that’s enough to annoy me, then I’m in trouble, because this post is just getting started. This week, the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GPDR) law went into effect, restricting the data collection and sharing that social media services can obtain from users. ‘Opt in’ consent is required for more than the data collection that’s necessary to use the service (in other words, users must provide consent for all additional collection that will be used for advertising purposes). It may be overly restrictive, but at this point, anything that curbs those companies’ greed is worth considering.
As if on cue, two other related stories appeared in my newsfeed, both from National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States. One was about people in hospital emergency rooms receiving location-based ads from personal injury (“ambulance chaser”) law firms. And the second was about someone’s Amazon Echo device recording their conversation at home and sending it to another person.
Let’s consider each of these independently. And then I’ll tell you my solution to both.
Digital Ambulance Chasers Law Firms Send Ads to Patients’ Phones Inside Emergency Rooms
If you’re an American, your medical privacy is about to get hacked. Attorneys are coming for you. While the United States has extensive laws protecting the privacy of medical data, ads are about to follow Americans in through the hospital door. Location-based ads have been around for several years, often used by retail businesses. Perhaps you’ve been a short distance from a supermarket and suddenly seen a coupon on your phone for something to buy there.
That’s not new. To be honest, I don’t usually see it myself, since I keep my phone’s location feature OFF most of the time. I also play havoc with online ads, opting out of some, complaining about others, and changing my address on certain apps (so they think I live in Fairbanks, Alaska, which is off by a few thousand miles). Flannel pants and smoked salmon: the ads that follow me are not well targeted.
What’s new is allowing these location-based services into hospitals and doctor’s offices in the U.S. Patients in hospital emergency rooms are beginning to receive ads from personal injury lawyers who are looking to make money by filing lawsuits and getting injury settlements. With that, peoples’ medical privacy has been violated, but it’s been done in such a way that no confidentiality laws are broken.
Put me down as “not terribly interested”. Better yet, as I tell the telemarketers, take me off your list. Add me to your “do not call” list. And by the way, this call may be recorded for quality assurance. If you call this number again, I will report you to the authorities and send you a bill for violating the law.
Those are some of the things I tell telemarketers who call trying to sell something. You also can sign up online for a bot service and transfer the phone call to the bot, letting it waste the telemarketer’s time by asking dumb questions and providing responses that are designed to slowly frustrate the caller.
How is it any different with ads on my phone that waste my time? My answer is the same: I don’t want any.
The good news is, I’ve found a solution. It’s called: turn the darn thing off. Turn off your phone. Or if you need to use the phone, simply disable the location function. Click. That was easy, wasn’t it? I rarely need the location tracker, and when I do, one click reactivates it. 99% of the time, that thing is off. Big brother doesn’t know where I am and that’s fine with me.
Amazon Echo Recorded and Sent Couple’s Conversation, All Without Their Knowledge
In this news story, a couple was at home having a conversation. Their Amazon Echo (smart speaker with Alexa) was on. It recorded their conversation and then sent it to one of their contacts. Hey Amazon, Google, Apple, and others: this is NOT supposed to happen.
The couple was having a conversation about wood flooring (fortunately, it wasn’t about anything more dangerous than that). And Amazon claims that what happened next was a complete fluke. Here’s its explanation:
"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."
Echo, fetch “Laurel” for me. Or is it “Yanny”? (I was so done with that news story after about 30 seconds. If you don’t know the reference, try Googling "laurel and yanny", but Google will remember you did.)
Let me make this even less likely. First of all, I don’t want one of those things in my house. We don’t need a smart home. I don’t want my refrigerator talking to me. I don’t want someone to hack into my heating system. I don’t need all of it networked so that I can watch my back porch from some app on my phone while I’m at work. And I don’t need my coffee brewed 10 minutes before I wake up. I’ll make it myself, thank you.
Someday, I probably will break down and buy a smart speaker system, but that will happen only when the rest of the family really wants it. I’ll resist it as long as I can. How lazy do I have to be to ask Google/Apple/Amazon what the weather is outside or to tell me the altitude of Mt. Everest? I can type those in myself.
I have a brain and several fingers. If I’m ever too busy to use either of them, then go ahead and push me off a cliff. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I can’t spare one minute to type it in myself.
Furthermore, let me suggest a simple remedy for the Echo problem experienced by this wood floor couple: Turn the darn thing off. If you don’t need it, why is it on all the time? That’s a waste of energy, even when it isn’t spying on you. Turn it on when you need it.
And that’s exactly what the couple in this news story did: they went around the house and unplugged all of their smart devices. Good for them. When our doorbell broke last year, I went out a bought a smart one that had all of these features. A few days later, after our family had enjoyed all of the ring tones and features, we decided it didn’t make our lives any better. I returned it to the store, came home with a low-tech doorbell that cost $9, and installed it myself. Long live dumb technology!
The next headline I saw was about Stonehenge-inspired ice cream flavors
And I decided it’s time to end this curmudgeon’s rant. I’m afraid I’m becoming the old geezer who is going to sit on his front porch and shake a stick at the neighborhood kids for all of their pernicious activities. Those motorized scooters are at the top of my list, but I have some help with that one: my dog hates them and chases anyone who rides one. With a fierce growl, he and I will take this world back to the Stone Age. Do they have ice cream?
Sources:
Stonehenge Ice Cream: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/05/26/613770102/spoonfuls-of-stonehenge-modern-ice-cream-flavors-inspired-by-history
Amazon Echo Conversation: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/25/614470096/amazon-echo-recorded-and-sent-couples-conversation-all-without-their-knowledge?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news
Digital Ambulance Chasers: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/25/613127311/digital-ambulance-chasers-law-firms-send-ads-to-patients-phones-inside-ers
Lawyer ad lists: https://courtsandsports.com/2013/03/23/top-25-bad-lawyer-billboards-participants-25-to-11/
And more: https://injurylawyerwin.com/11-terrible-personal-injury-billboards/
Image credits: Top and ice cream photos are public domain. NPR stories are screenshots from npr.org. Attorney billboards & ads are all over the Internet and have been shared like memes, so I don't really know where they started, but injurylawyerwin.com, copyranter.blogspot.com, newsmov.biz, and courtsandsports.com are my main sources there (even though they may be secondary sources for the original content, which does not appear to be copyrighted).
