More and more people are getting home listening devices in their homes such as Google nest and Amazon Alexa as they try to embrace new technology and make their lives easier in some ways. There has been however some debate about the wisdom of having a device in the home that could potentially be listening to conversations and tracking an individual’s internet searches and targeting marketing to these individuals as a result of this.

It is without doubt that we live in a world where our privacy is compromised continually as companies sell on our details to the highest bidder. Targeted advertising has become commonplace on our mobile devices so it would be very difficult to avoid this but the listening devices in our homes take this a step further as a recent development indicates that Alexa will be able to predict our next response from a question posed. For example, if we ask for the opening times of an attraction in a certain location the device will ask whether we want to know what the weather prediction is for that location. Some may say that this is a helpful feature but is it going a step too far? Will the next development be that the device will make decisions for us? A scary prospect indeed.