The privacy bracelet which can jam the smart speakers

While the Smart speakers are really helpful in our day to day activities but they are also very creepy as they record the conversation of their unsuspecting users. But a new piece of technology, which is custom-made, has emerged that aims to fight against this privacy menace.

This is a wearable jammer that has been designed in the style of cyberpunk bracelet that had been developed by 3 professors working at the University of Chicago. This wearable privacy bracelet emits the ultrasonic noise which then interferes with the ability of the microphone to record audio.

The professors named Ben Zhao, Heather Zheng and Pedro Lopes have published the schematics of the privacy bracelet online so that anyone who ahs ability to make one can make it at home.

It is to be noted here that this is not the first time that anyone has made a privacy bracelet for acting as a microphone jammer neither it is the first time that somebody has used the ultrasound to hinder the abilities of smart speakers. But thing is that this is a special device for the following reasons. The paper on this privacy bracelet which explains the scientific working behind this wearable jammer treads as, “jammers are also directional, requiring users to point the jammer to a microphone; instead, our wearable bracelet is built in a ring-layout that allows it to jam in multiple directions. This is beneficial in that it allows our jammer to protect against microphones hidden out of sight.”

Also, the authors of this study say that as people normally speak with their hands while also speaking with their mouths, this privacy bracelet is going to be extra effective in blocking the hidden microphones of the smart speakers as the user moves around. The video above demonstrates the effect of this privacy bracelet effectively.

As per media sources, Zheng and Zhao have said that they can make this privacy bracelet for a sum of about 20 dollars but they do not have any current plans on making it a large scale production. This is why they have published the schematics of this privacy bracelet online.

The authors wrote on the ‘Github’, “This [GitHub repository] provides simulation source code, hardware design, firmware and schematics to replicate our results and prototypes in the paper.”