Abstract Through voice characteristics and manner of expression, even seemingly benign voice recordings can reveal sensitive attributes about a recorded speaker (e. g., geographical origin, health status, personality). We conducted a nationally representative survey in the UK (n = 683, 18–69 years) to investigate people’s awareness about the inferential power of voice and speech analysis. Our results show that – while awareness levels vary between different categories of inferred information – there is generally low awareness across all participant demographics, even among participants with professional experience in computer science, data mining, and IT security. For instance, only 18.7% of participants are at least somewhat aware that physical and mental health information can be inferred from voice recordings. Many participants have rarely (28.4%) or never (42.5%) even thought about the possibility of personal information being inferred from speech data. After a short educational video on the topic, participants express only moderate privacy concern. However, based on an analysis of open text responses, unconcerned reactions seem to be largely explained by knowledge gaps about possible data misuses. Watching the educational video lowered participants’ intention to use voice-enabled devices. In discussing the regulatory implications of our findings, we challenge the notion of “informed consent” to data processing. We also argue that inferences about individuals need to be legally recognized as personal data and protected accordingly.

EU data protection laws grant consumers the right to access the personal data that companies hold about them. In a first-of-its-kind longitudinal study, we examine how service providers have complied with subject access requests over four years. In three iterations between 2015 and 2019, we sent subject access requests to vendors of 225 mobile apps popular in Germany. Throughout the iterations, 19 to 26% of the vendors were unreachable or did not reply at all. Our subject access requests were fulfilled in 15 to 53% of the cases, with an unexpected decline between the GDPR enforcement date and the end of our study. The remaining responses exhibit a long list of shortcomings, including severe violations of information security and data protection principles. Some responses even contained deceptive and misleading statements (7 to 13%). Further, 9% of the apps were discontinued and 27% of the user accounts vanished during our study, mostly without proper notification about the consequences for our personal data. While we observe improvements for selected aspects over time, the results indicate that subject access request handling will be unsatisfactory as long as vendors accept such requests via email and process them manually.

Abstract Besides various other privacy concerns with mobile devices, many people suspect their smartphones to be secretly eavesdropping on them. In particular, a large number of reports has emerged in recent years claiming that private conversations conducted in the presence of smartphones seemingly resulted in targeted online advertisements. These rumors have not only attracted media attention, but also the attention of regulatory authorities. With regard to explaining the phenomenon, opinions are divided both in public debate and in research. While one side dismisses the eavesdropping suspicions as unrealistic or even paranoid, many others are fully convinced of the allegations or at least consider them plausible. To help structure the ongoing controversy and dispel misconceptions that may have arisen, this paper provides a holistic overview of the issue, reviewing and analyzing existing arguments and explanatory approaches from both sides. Based on previous research and our own analysis, we challenge the widespread assumption that the spying fears have already been disproved. While confirming a lack of empirical evidence, we cannot rule out the possibility of sophisticated large-scale eavesdropping attacks being successful and remaining undetected. Taking into account existing access control mechanisms, detection methods, and other technical aspects, we point out remaining vulnerabilities and research gaps.