Who's listening? Not JLab.
In a world where big tech companies are getting caught sharing your data without your permission, JLab chooses to give you control.
JLab products are NOT always listening - we guarantee that. Our microphones are only activated by YOU. YOU have the choice to turn on your smart assistant, SIRI, Google Assistant, Alexa.
We believe it's important to keep this control in the users' hands. In an Inc. article 'Google Is Absolutely Listening to Your Conversations, and It Just Confirms Why People Don't Trust Big Tech', Inc. found that Google 'revealed that audio of Google Assistant conversations is reviewed by humans.'
How JLab uses Smart Assistants
In every JLab product, you - the user - must activate it. Our philosophy is that you should have control of when your microphone is recording your voice, leaving you in control of what is heard.
For instance, in our JBuds Air Executive you double tap the left earbuds to activate SIRI (iOS) or "OK GOOGLE" (Android). For the JBuds Pro Bluetooth Earbuds click the middle button twice to activate smart assistants.
JLab doesn't store data or have access to data from our technology.
Articles of Interest on Privacy:
There are many layers to the privacy conversation - especially how tech companies are using the data. Most claim to use the data to help improve their personal assistants and voice software.
Amazon and Google are listing to your voice recordings. Here's what we know about that. "Personally, I don't have a problem with an Amazon or Google employee or contractor listening to an anonymized recording of me saying "turn off the dining room" to try and figure out why the assistant thought I said "turn off the dynamo." It's similar to the way an employee at Sony might review my PlayStation usage after a game crashes to figure out what went wrong and help prevent it from happening again."
The difference is that when my video game crashes, my PS4 asks for my permission to take a look at the crash report. - CNET
Apple AirPods may be used to spy on conversation, but please don't. "The process is fairly simple — users just have to activate the Live Listen feature, leave their iPhone near the people they want to spy on, and listen to the conversation from another place through their AirPods". -Digital Trends
The Terrible True about Alexa. "This week, I read through a history of everything I’ve said to Alexa, and it felt a little bit like reading an old diary. Until I remembered that the things I’ve told Alexa in private are stored on an Amazon server and have possibly been read by an Amazon employee. This is all to make Alexa better, the company keeps saying. However, to many people, it’s not immediately obvious how humans interacting with your seemingly private voice commands is anything other than surveillance. Alexa, these people say, is a spy hiding in a wiretapping device." - Gizmodo
Tips for Maintaining Your Privacy
Here's some tips:
- Understand which smart assistants you use and where
- Find out how to turn off privacy
- Double check your settings
- Use secure passwords
- Keep your main email and phone number private
- Change your social network account privacy settings
- Stay private on WiFi networks
If you take the right steps to keeping your information private, you should see a big change in the spam messages you receive, what your devices are listening to, and ads you see.