TC: LISTEN-PROOF YOURSELF

Technology has helped all of us in a wide variety of ways. We use it every day to grow our businesses and take advantage of new advances in medicine to help us live longer and healthier lives.

I, along with many others have concerns regarding privacy. Video surveillance  has become part of our daily lives. It’s almost impossible to go anywhere and not be under the watchful eye of a video. It does offer some positives such as people stealing packages from your front door and the surround cameras in your cars.

My challenge to you is to control unwanted listeners that infringe on your private conversations and business planning conversations. Popular devices such as the Echo from Amazon, google devices, and Apple all have listening capabilities. I read in the paper this week that all your conversation are recorded and stored for at least 3 month.

All businesses, small and large, are vulnerable to competition from these tech giants. Look at the financial industry. Apple now has a credit card and Google is working on offering checking accounts. The next step may very well be the offer to manage our finances.

If you are working on a new marketing campaign or plan to introduce a new product or service, it’s important that you keep that information private until you are ready to launch. New ideas and new inventions are very vulnerable; if someone listening in likes something, they can easily steal the idea and  take ownership of it.

Spend some time this week researching which devices in your home have the capability of listening and recording conversations. Most listening devices can be modified to turn off the listening capabilities or, you can always unplug a device.

Why not consider having a “clean room” with no tech devices  to be used for meetings and private family conversations.

We can’t have “Big Brother” watching and listening to our every move and conversation.