Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

kiro7.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 734 posts

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#501

Post by Piskvorrr »

acranox wrote: post #389
edwhitesell wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"

You'd be amazed at my dad's ability to butt dial people with an iPhone. It's possible. Like multiple times per week possible.

Lock doesn't have to be swipe-to-open. I'd be amazed if he could buttprint-unlock ;)

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#502

Post by kevingrahl »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #487

I recall a few weeks ago how some researchers figured out that the voice-commands could be triggered with subliminal messages, too. i.e., you wouldn't have to go 'Ok Google', but rather just play a fingerprint of that sound that makes the algorithm think you said that, without it being audible or understandable to human beings. And you could hide it in other audio like music. That feels pretty scary particularly beca…

Do you happen to have a link to said research? I’d be curious to fiddle around with that.. for educational purposes of course..

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#503

Post by reaperducer »

BeetleB wrote: post #445
calcifer wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People care deeply about their privacy. No, they don't. Do you really think if, before she made this purchase, someone explained to her all the things that could theoratically go wrong with this device, she would have chosen not to buy it? She only cares now and acts like she doesn't share quite a bit of the blame because it actually affected her. I think it is highly likely she'll just switch to an Apple or Google…

Completely agree with you. I've seen this over and over and over with people I know. They always want something badly enough that they'll find any excuse to dismiss any downsides to it. "Amazon/Google/Apple/Facebook/X have very smart people who will not allow this to happen." "I have nothing to hide." "People who want to listen to our boring conversations are losers. Let them waste their time doing so." And the list…

"I have nothing to hide."

Response: "Cool. What's your e-mail password?"

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#504

Post by reaperducer »

BeetleB wrote: post #497
reaperducer wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, they don't. Do you really think if, before she made this purchase, someone explained to her all the things that could theoratically go wrong with this device, she would have chosen not to buy it? Yes. Do you think if everyone knew what was going to happen with the Facebook scandal before it happened they would have signed up for Facebook? That's why it's called a "scandal."

>Do you think if everyone knew what was going to happen with the Facebook scandal before it happened they would have signed up for Facebook? That's why it's called a "scandal." Yes. I also noticed how they haven't left once the scandal came to light.

>I also noticed how they haven't left once the scandal came to light.

You and I must read different news sources.

From what I've read, Facebook is down over a billion visits in the last quarter.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#505

Post by fmj »

acranox wrote: post #389
edwhitesell wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"

You'd be amazed at my dad's ability to butt dial people with an iPhone. It's possible. Like multiple times per week possible.

My friend does this fairly often. He'll finish a call, and turn off his screen, but he has a tendency to to hit the fingerprint scanner as he's putting it into his pocket due to the design of the case and the way he holds it.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#506

Post by awat »

chaostheory wrote: post #473
awat wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree at all on the PR side. Spent sometime in the contact center tools space and my general experience is if a company allows it exempt higher level employees avoid engaging with customer service directly at pretty much all costs. Not saying it happened here but thats how you get $10/hour vendors making judgement calls on customer situations that are front page news.

Yes, I also used to work in that space, our software / platform was used by Fortune 500 companies. My point still stands. This is Amazon and not random company X's customer service. There are very few companies like this that people can name (e.g. Nordstrom, Patagonia, ...) It this used to not happen at Amazon. Customer service used to be empowered to make customers happy, which was what made Amazon legendary. Things…

I see what you are saying it definitely could be the market share or maybe even just the overall volume (QA at scale).

I guess I just don’t have a long enough track record with them to see them in that grouping of great customer service. They’ve pretty much fought me tooth and nail over price matching and prime shipping that doesnt meet the two guarantee over the last couple of years which is probably biasing my view.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#507

Post by zeptomu »

dustinmoorenet wrote: post #140

I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…

> "That server makes decisions on if lights should be on [...]"

Why would you even want such a system?

My flat uses the Button-Framework which provides a really convenient UI/UX. The edge between 2 nodes (rooms) has a button (a haptic device to switch between boolean states) at around hand-height that you can press to switch the light on or off. It works quite well (it uses a switch-system technically) and the user decides by her/himself if the light should be on or off and just presses the button after careful reasoning.

Granted, it doesn't use Docker, but it really works well and needs low-maintainance. My model is running since 23 years and I never had any issues - it's even open source.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#508

Post by foolfoolz »

yason wrote: post #297

I am oversimplifying here but: * install device that is designed to listen to speech in the house * the device is connected to internet * the device is capable of contacting other internet peers/services/hosts * the device knows a bit about its owner's internet presence such as contacts * the device is equipped with simple conversational user interface based on fuzzy human speech-command detection These basically bou…

i think there’s a market for non cloud home automation. i will never buy alexa

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#509

Post by dcohenp »

BonesJustice wrote: post #485
arcticbull wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I can't "Hey Siri" someone else' phone, can I? It's certainly never worked for me.

To my knowledge, “Hey Siri” has never been tied to the owner’s voice. I was able to post to a colleague’s Facebook account a couple years ago, using nothing but voice commands. It was sitting on his desk, locked. I haven’t tried it since, and I keep it disabled on my own phone.

"Hey Siri" has in fact been tied to the owner's voice since the iPhone 6s (2015): https://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/11/apples-hey-siri-feature...

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#510

Post by InitialLastName »

perl4ever wrote: post #459
edwhitesell wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most phone now have some kind of lock screen, which makes it pretty difficult to get to the butt dialing stage. Will speech command recognition get to that stage? The main reason I won't have any of those products in my house is because of that. I'd much rather have a confirmation of some kind before the system takes action. "...random talking..." Assistant "I am recording" Me: "Stop recording"

I dropped my phone in the gym and it somehow typed garbage all over the Notes app where I keep my grocery list and record of what I did in the gym last... This sort of thing makes me nostalgic for the old days of explicit "Save" commands in every application.

I'll settle for a reasonable "undo" feature.
Post reply on HN