8 October 2019
 Categories: Technology, Blog

With all the new smart home technology available, like the Amazon Echo or the Echo Dot 3rd Generation speaker, you certainly have a lot of choices for how to bring your home into the twenty-first century. You can even link your smartphones to your smart home technology and use the smart home technology to place phone calls without touching or picking up your phone and with just a voice command. However, there are a few things you should know about programming your smart home speakers to place phone calls via voice command.

Your Smart Phone Has to Be Able to Sync with Your Smart Home Technology

Usually, these devices sync over Bluetooth technology, but that is no guarantee for one company's smartphone to sync with another company's smart home devices. It is actually better to have a phone and home technology come from the same company so that there is little interference between phones and devices. You can try it with all of the different smartphones in your home to see which work best, but you may find this particular statement of "like with like" to be true. 

Calls Made Over Your Smartphone Technology Have No Privacy Guarantees

These devices are designed to listen to and obey your every command. Ordering food to be delivered through delivery apps, reordering items through online-only retailers, and even answering questions about the weather and what to wear or do on any given day are now answered through your smart home devices. This means that the device, and those behind its many services provided, may be listening to phone conversations.

There are no privacy guarantees included with these devices. There are definitely no privacy guarantees included where phone conversations through the smart home devices via voice commands are concerned. If you are not concerned about that, then it really is not a big deal. 

You May Have to Initially Program Your Contacts List into the Device Via a Website

In order for you to place calls through the smart home device, you may have to go online on a computer or laptop to the manufacturer's website. Going through a series of steps that drops privacy filters will give your smart home devices access to your email and your contacts list. Then you can begin calling people via voice command, sending emails, and having the smart home devices even read your latest emails back to you.