Many people have had experiences where they didn’t say anything even resembling a code word for their Google Smart speaker and Alexa, but somehow they still heard. The things we talk about wanting to buy suddenly turn up in the advertisements we see, or in commercials that we watch. This is disconcerting because it seems like our privacy is being invaded which we don’t seem to notice, and the thing that’s even worse is that we’re doing it to ourselves.

The things that we say to Google Smart speakers and Alexas are logged in a database for easy access in the system in case we ask that question again. Which is great when you want it, but what about the times that you don’t want the system to hear things?

When you think about it, the system is always listening, it has to, otherwise, it wouldn’t be able to be voice-activated. It wouldn’t be able to respond instantly to commands unless it could hear its name being called, so it listens all the time to hear its name and when it does, it listens to the command afterward.

This brings the question of how it hears things we say even without us asking a question, or saying the keywords to activate the machine, it can hear the things we say all the time, that’s why the things you say suddenly end up in your feed on Instagram, or in your commercials on Hulu.

“It’s bizarre, this one time I was saying I wanted to buy a Gucci purse, but I didn’t have enough money for it yet, and the next thing you know I had a commercial for a website that sells authentic luxury brands, and a video about loans on Instagram,” says Tanya, who has an Alexa. She says that she uses her Alexa all the time, to turn on music and turn on and off the lights.

Jacklyn Summers said “Something like that happened to me, but instead of it being Alexa it was Instagram, and it has happened multiple times,” she said that she had instagram open and she was talking to her friend about a famous person and she started scrolling and that person popped up in her feed. “It can be kind of useful, but it’s also kind of scary, you never know what it could be listening to,” she said.

That’s the thing that a lot of people are afraid of, you never know when it could be listening, or what it could be listening to.