There is a cyber criminal around every corner.
Recently, I paid the annual fee for my domain which is catsincambridge.net.
Every time I pay it, someone emails me offering to sell me access to “.com”
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This year I must have had the same offer from four or five different people and a couple of them have been cheeky enough to send a follow up:
“Did I receive their email?”
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I could offer them a few choice words but that is no doubt what they hope for as I am sure they could extract all sorts of information from an email I might generate.
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When I travelled about by myself, as a young girl, I knew to look out for unsavoury-looking people, but when I reached home I felt safe.
These days we are always asked, by medical practitioners if we:
“Feel safe at home?”.
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Fortunately, I do, but more and more I begin to wonder, as all my movements are tracked by artificial intelligence.
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About a year ago, I needed a new phone and for various reasons settled for an older version iPhone.
My PC is a Mac and I found myself getting along much better with their version of a smartphone.
But it has a lot of features that I mostly don’t use.
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I also have an old iPad which I use almost exclusively to do word/geography/history puzzles.
The iPad came with Siri which I didn’t plan to use but just for fun I programmed it to speak French.
It amused me that I could listen to music just by speaking to a device in French.
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Being a Mac product, my phone also has Siri which like all those other features, I don’t use.
One day, when Grant and I were out driving we decided a little guidance would be helpful so I got out my phone and fetched up Google Maps.
Grant then got rather annoyed because it offered directions in French.
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This had never happened before and given that I last spoke French in a convent school in Cambodia, in 1962, there are a few modern terms I am not exactly up-to-date with.
So I made attempts to unscramble this problem with my phone.
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One is always hesitant when attempting to amend the programming of technical devices because it so often ends in tears, but as I scrutinized the thing, I couldn’t even find anything that tempted me.
Nowhere did it say French was my language of choice.
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When we are on the road, I often use Google Map for reference and it speaks English, except when we actually need advice on how to proceed and then, inevitably….French.
Grant probably thinks I do this deliberately.
He mutters unkind things about Apple.
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Recently, a new development.
One day, a voice spoke to me spontaneously from the vicinity of my left hip. Not expecting it, I wasn’t tuned in but it sounded suspiciously like French.
Perhaps I should have thought to say:“Repetez”
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But Brain doesn’t respond that fast these days and weird stuff seems part of life now, so I ignored it. What else is there to do?
A little time elapsed, then one day when I was at the sink, Grant stuck his head in the door to ask a question and he was taken aback when the response seemed to come from my left hip.
This time I recognised from the tone that it was French though still I could not understand.
But now at least I knew to listen, should my hip decide to speak again.
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Actually, it’s not my hip.
Because my phone always fell out of my pocket, Grant made me a pouch which I carry from a strap and it sits in that proximity.
In the past few days, the voice has appeared to be activated possibly by running water or the sound of washing up and I worked out that it is Siri which is active on the iPad.
And she was asking me which App I wished her to open.
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It was unimportant. I thought.
This morning the silly bitch decided to initiate a phone call for me.
Time for action.
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Having turned the wretched thing off, I am wondering what tech-punishment to expect.
In the meantime I’ve just had another message flash up on my screen:
“ding-a-ling”!
“this is our SEVENTH request” (a political thing)
Yes, well take a hint.
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I have the choice of Siri, Alexa, or Google. I’m trying to get them to have a three way conversation!
That’ll be interesting!
When Berto said in the late 1990s that AI was going to rule our lives one day, I thought he was talking nonsense. Now it’s scary to see how fast this is actually happening! I don’t even want to think what our phones and laptops are all aware of in our daily lives!
J’aime vos photos enneigées (let Siri repeat that to you in French)!
Ha! Thank you!
Voice assistants like Siri and the Google version constantly listen in to every conversaation and household sound, trying to pick up ‘key words’ and phrases. They are incredibly intrusive, and also monitor your location at all times. All of this is supposedly used to direct advertising at you, but I am not interested in using one. I have asked my wife to uninstall the Google version on her phone, but she won’t do it.
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree with Pete, they listen to EVERYTHING! Talk about buying something and it will be the first advert you see next time you open Google. Our Alexa has only recently started using my name in all our conversations and it never mistakes me for anyone else in the house. I have no idea how.
Ha, ha, gotta love (or hate) technology. I refuse to have a Siri/Alexa in the house (when I’m home).