Sonos app can turn a disabled Sonos One microphone back on - privacy issue?

Well yea, I'd agree that privacy concerns can be looked at as a risk/reward decision.

. . .

So I get why people don't want voice assistants in their home. I just don't get why people claim I'm irrational for using them when their privacy is already compromised.

But I go back to my analogy of worrying about the locks on the attic windows when you are leaving the door wide open. Sure the front door being open may give you a fine cross breeze that is beneficial on a hot summer day, but that doesn't mean the robbers getting in through the attic are more of a worry just because the breeze is nice. This is where I can't understand the cherry picking of what is a worry and what is not; if your concern is actually privacy, and not merely an exercise of one's penchant for worry.

It is also akin to not allowing a trusted friend in your home, one who has never given any reason to be untrustworthy (and even signs an agreement to that end), while simultaneously letting in the local street gang for a party. Sure the street gang might throw great parties, but then why kick your friend out of the house? Apple and Google, not to mention hundreds of apps, have been proven to be spying on you. Sonos has not, aside from the very specific data gathering they have laid out in their very clear privacy policy.

A nit on GPS. -- Using GPS is perfectly safe and anonymous, as it is a receive only system. There is only a problem when something else reports your location.


Well yes, GPS isn't the issue, it's when google decides to store the information of where you've been. It's great that Google can tell me how long my commute is today, not so great that I never told Google where I work.

[Apple and Google, not to mention hundreds of apps, have been proven to be spying on you. Sonos has not, aside from the very specific data gathering they have laid out in their very clear privacy policy.

But the voice stuff is not Sonos controlled, or at least I think it is not, they just pass the voice information along to the voice recognition provider, Amazon for Alexa and probably soon Apple and Google as their services get integrated.

If Sonos did the voice stuff in-house I'd feel a bit differently.

But the voice stuff is not Sonos controlled, or at least I think it is not, they just pass the voice information along to the voice recognition provider, Amazon for Alexa and probably soon Apple and Google as their services get integrated.

If Sonos did the voice stuff in-house I'd feel a bit differently.

No, it is controlled by Sonos locally at the point of origin. Sonos controls when the microphones are listening, how much is recorded/stored, and exactly what is sent for processing to the Amazon/Google cloud. And they state quite clearly what that all entails:

In greater depth, this 'listening' means that the voice-enabled Sonos Product buffers and re-records locally, without transmitting or storing any information, until it detects the word or phrase (such as “Alexa”) that triggers the device to begin actively recording. If the Product does not detect the wake-up word, it continues to record over itself in a never-ending loop lasting a few seconds. This is all done locally on your Sonos Product and is not sent to Sonos or any third party. If a wake-up word is detected, the Sonos Product begins recording. In other words, it does not record or retain any audio data, or begin to transmit any data until it is 'woken up.' You are notified that it is recording by a visual element, such as a light on the Sonos Product, and a specific sound.

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/privacy

So if Sonos were ever to record whole conversations not prompted by the wake word and/or they stored or sent them for processing, they would be liable for prosecution/civil suits because their Privacy Policy states just the opposite.

As an aside, I can tell you this stuff is taken very seriously by the FTC. I was involved in a project that required drivers license verification for a point of sale terminal. There was a ton of questions from the legal department about processing and/or retention of the personal info. We had to document and provide proof that the bar code information not only wasn't retained/stored or sent to the central server, but also that there was a call to 'Arrays.fill(array, 0)' to zero out the data after each transaction. A little overkill, but it shut the naysayers up (as much as you can allay the fears of those worried about stuff like that).

Since Sonos is a public company, I imagine their SOX policy also becomes a big factor in this. Auditors, and thus stock holders, surely want to make sure Sonos isn't storing unnecessary customer data as any data breach would surely be a big hit on the stock.

As a side note, my company has been pushing to identify all the locations where PII (Personal Identification Information) of employees is stored. The powers that be don't seem to understand what they are dealing with though as they consider username (which is first initial + last name) to be PII, but the email address (which is username@xxxx.com) is not.