Patent Issued for Intelligent personal assistant deactivation (USPTO 11194916): United Services Automobile Association

2021 DEC 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Niemann, Sheryl Lane (San Antonio, TX, US), Roth, Matthew Louis Dent (Boerne, TX, US), filed on September 18, 2019, was published online on December 7, 2021.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11194916 is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Many corporations, universities, government offices, institutions and other entities require their employees to engage in telephone communications with third parties, such as customers, clients, consultants or contractors, for example. During the course of these communications, confidential information and/or proprietary information may be exchanged between the employee and the third party. Such confidential information may be, for example, the third party’s credit card number, bank account number or other financial information. The proprietary information could be, for example, the entity’s proprietary information such as pricing, contractual terms and other trade secrets.

“Many entities now have substantial numbers of their employees working regularly or occasionally from their own home on their computers, communicating with their employer over the Internet via a home network. Employees may also be working in less secure public environments, such as a hotel room, a coffee shop or a library. In many cases, the home environment is not as secure as the office environment, because the home environment may include one or more intelligent listening devices or ILDs. In many cases, the ILDs house intelligent personal assistants or IPAs. Thus the terms “ILD” and “IPA” may be used interchangeably in the descriptions of the embodiments disclosed herein. The home environment typically also includes smart phones, which may also host an IPA. Note that IPAs may also be referred to by other names, such a “Virtual Assistant,” for example. For the purposes of this disclosure, the terms “intelligent personal assistant” (or “IPA”) and intelligent listening device (or “ILD”) shall both refer to any device that actively listens and responds to voice-activated commands, as well as to any application on any device that actively listens and responds to voice-activated commands.

“When the employee is working from home and the home includes one or more ILDs that host an IPA, it is possible that the ILD or IPA may accidentally happen to capture some confidential and/or proprietary information. The ILD or IPA may in turn incidentally pass on scraps or all of that information to other devices in the home over the home’s local area network. Examples of other devices that may be in communication with the device that hosts an IPA include, for example, mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets or laptops. They may also include stationary devices such as a refrigerator, a TV set, a microwave oven, a doorbell monitor and many other appliances or devices. The network that connects these everyday devices to each other may be referred to as the “Internet of Things,” or the “IoT.” Because all or some of these devices have the capability of capturing and transmitting information over the IoT, it is possible that the IPA, ILD or some application or device on the network may at that time or at a later time disseminate some of that confidential or proprietary information either directly or through one of the other devices connected to the IoT to persons who should not receive that information.

“In addition to the home environment, the employee may be in a somewhat less private environment, such as, for example, a hotel room or other non-public location that nevertheless is less secure than working in a private setting such as the employee’s home. In other situations, the employee may be working at a public location such as a coffee shop or a library. These situations may also pose some risk that confidential or proprietary information may inadvertently be disclosed to third parties.

“For these reasons, there is a need for systems and methods that secure the confidentiality of that confidential and/or proprietary information.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In one aspect, embodiments include a system for deactivating an intelligent personal assistant on a home private network that includes a router, a personal computer and at least one voice-activated device. The personal computer can communicate with a company computer through a server. A deactivation app in communication with the router is housed in at least one of the server, the company computer and the personal computer. The voice-activated device has an Intelligent Personal Assistant or IPA. The IPA responds to voice commands and can store auditory information in its memory banks. The deactivation app can deactivate voice recognition in the IPA by issuing commands to the voice-activated device through the personal computer, thus mitigating the risk of inadvertently disseminating confidential or proprietary information.

“In another aspect, embodiments include a system for mitigating the risk of inadvertently disseminating confidential or proprietary information when using a telephone in the presence of a voice-activated device. The system includes a local area network in a location that includes a router and a number of devices in communication with the local area network. The devices include a personal computer as well as the voice-activated device, which houses an IPA. The system also includes a number of additional devices that can receive and store auditory information and are also in communication with the local area network. The system further includes an IPA deactivation app can cause the personal computer to issue a voicekill command to the voice-activated device to turn off its voice activation function for either a prescribed time period or until the voice activation function is turned back on manually.

“In another aspect, embodiments include a method for preventing the incidental dissemination of confidential or proprietary information when using a telephone in a location with a local area network. The method includes identifying all devices in communication with the local area network, identifying voice-activated devices among all the devices in communication with the local area network, and then disabling the voice-activated functions on the voice-activated device.

“Other systems, methods, features and advantages of the invention will be, or will become, apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art upon examination of the following figures and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, features and advantages be included within this description and this summary, be within the scope of the invention, and be protected by the following claims.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system for deactivating intelligent personal assistants comprising: a local area network that comprises a router, a first computing device and at least one voice-activated device; wherein the first computing device is configured to communicate with a second computing device through a server, the second computing device being located on a different network from the local area network; a deactivation app in communication with the router, wherein the deactivation app is housed in at least one of the server, the first computing device, and the second computing device; wherein the at least one voice-activated device comprises an intelligent personal assistant; wherein the intelligent personal assistant responds to voice commands and stores auditory information in memory; wherein the deactivation app is configured to: detect that the first computing device is logging into a process running on the second computing device; determine whether the local area network is a public network or a private network; and issue commands to the voice-activated device that disable the intelligent personal assistant when the deactivation app determines that the local area network is a private network; or issue warnings to a user of the first computing device when the deactivation app determines that the local area network is a public network.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the server comprises an office communications module that controls communications between the server and the home private network, wherein the office communications module includes a list of all devices in direct communication with the private home network.

“3. The system of claim 2, wherein the office communications module is configured to identify all devices in direct communication with the home private network.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the deactivation app is configured to determine whether an employee is attempting to log in during scheduled hours.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the home private network comprises a plurality of additional devices in addition to the at least one voice-activated device, and the deactivation app is configured to disconnect certain of the plurality of additional devices from the home private network when an employee is logged onto the server.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the warnings include warnings that other intelligent personal assistants may be listening to the user.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the deactivation app is configured to prompt the user to agree to shutting down the at least one voice-activated device in response to detecting that the local area network is a private network.

“8. The system of claim 7, wherein the deactivation app issues additional warnings to the user if the user does not agree to shutting down the at least one voice-activated device.

“9. A system for mitigating the risk of inadvertently disseminating confidential or proprietary information when using a telephone in the presence of a voice-activated device comprising: a local area network in a location comprising a router and a plurality of devices in communication with the local area network, wherein the plurality of devices include a first computing device, and the voice-activated device, wherein the voice-activated device houses an intelligent personal assistant that responds to voice commands and stores auditory information in memory; a deactivation app that is configured to: detect that the first computing device is communicating with a second computing device over a wide area network; determine whether the local area network is a public network or a private network; and issue commands to the voice-activated device that disable the intelligent personal assistant when the deactivation app determines that the local area network is a private network; or issue warnings to a user of the first computing device when the deactivation app determines that the local area network is a public network.

“10. The system of claim 9, wherein the warnings include warnings that other intelligent personal assistants may be listening to the user.

“11. The system of claim 9, further comprising a server located in a company office, wherein the server comprises an office communications module that controls communications between the local area network and the server and is associated with a database that contains proprietary information and confidential information.

“12. The system of claim 11, wherein the office communications module is configured to associate login attempts with company employees, and to determine whether the login attempts are within the company’s employees scheduled work hours.

“13. The system of claim 11, wherein the issued commands to the voice-activated device disable the intelligent person assistant for a prescribed time period.

“14. The system of claim 9, wherein the deactivation app is configured to instruct an employee who is attempting to login to manually disable any intelligent personal assistants that cannot be turned off automatically.

“15. The system of claim 9, wherein the deactivation app is configured to reactivate the intelligent personal assistant after a prescribed time.

“16. A method for preventing the incidental dissemination of confidential or proprietary information when using a telephone in a location with a local area network comprising: identifying all devices in communication with the local area network; identifying voice-activated devices among all the devices in communication with the local area network, wherein the voice-activated devices respond to voice commands and store auditory information in memory; detecting that a first computing device is logging into a process running on a second computing device, wherein the first computing device is connected to the local area network, and wherein the first computing device communicates with the second computing device over a wide area network; determining whether the local area network is a public network or a private network; and disabling the voice-activated devices in response to determining that the local area network is a private network; or issuing warnings to a user of the first computing device in response to determining that the local area network is a public network.

“17. The method of claim 16, further comprising re-activating the voice-activated devices after a prescribed period of time.

“18. The method of claim 16, further comprising determining if the first computing device is logging in during unscheduled work hours and issuing warnings to the user when the first computing device is logging in during unscheduled working hours.

“19. The method of claim 16, wherein the issued warnings inform the user that one or more intelligent personal assistants may be listening.

“20. The method of claim 16, wherein disabling the voice-activated devices includes disabling voice-activated functionality of the voice activated devices.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Niemann, Sheryl Lane. Intelligent personal assistant deactivation. U.S. Patent Number 11194916, filed September 18, 2019, and published online on December 7, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11194916.PN.&OS=PN/11194916RS=PN/11194916

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