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Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

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Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#31

Post by melling »

rdtsc wrote: post #17

I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. Some are considered tech people who should know stuff like this could happen, but they just don't care or don't think it will happen to them. Somewhere there is an ex-Stasi officer who is thinking "I wish we were that good and had people fooled to voluntarily install listening devi…

Why are you baffled? They’re great little devices. I have two Amazon echoes.

Now that I can use my Apple Music, they are used constantly.

Voice-first devices are long overdue.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#32

Post by thfuran »

melling wrote: post #31
rdtsc wrote: post #17

I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. Some are considered tech people who should know stuff like this could happen, but they just don't care or don't think it will happen to them. Somewhere there is an ex-Stasi officer who is thinking "I wish we were that good and had people fooled to voluntarily install listening devi…

Why are you baffled? They’re great little devices. I have two Amazon echoes. Now that I can use my Apple Music, they are used constantly. Voice-first devices are long overdue.

>Voice-first devices are long overdue.

Sure, that's not really anything that anyone disagrees with. It's the acceptance of data collection and exfiltration that is odd.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#33

Post by isostatic »

kbenson wrote: post #16
sciurus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of phones, aren't most people's smartphones already "an always on microphone in their homes"?

It's an always on microphone (as opposed to an always on device) if hacked or if Google/Apple change something fundamental, but only then. Echo/Dot have an always on microphone by design.

This is key. Yes the CIA or Apple or whoever could conceivably hack/change my phone or laptop to turn on the microphone and camera on, but there's not much you can really do about that as hardware switches seem to have gone out of vogue (I've got tape over my laptop camera like most sane people, but microphone?)

However I suspect the majority of iphones have "Hey Siri" enabled, and probably the same with whatever android uses

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#34

Post by carapace »

lykr0n wrote: post #22
rdtsc wrote: post #17

I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. Some are considered tech people who should know stuff like this could happen, but they just don't care or don't think it will happen to them. Somewhere there is an ex-Stasi officer who is thinking "I wish we were that good and had people fooled to voluntarily install listening devi…

This. You're trusting everything you say & do to a company who says they're not going to share your data with others and that have the proper control in place to prevent other people from getting it.

Yeah, it's like volunteering to become a serf.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#37

Post by dopamean »

randyrand wrote: post #23

Is there a good non-internet connected device for turning on lights with your voice?

I asked this the last time one of these posts came up and everyone suggested I check out https://www.home-assistant.io/

I haven't started building anything yet but I will in the new year (fingers crossed).

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#38

Post by stevecalifornia »

rdtsc wrote: post #17

I am baffled by how many people have no problems adding always listening and recording Google and Facebook devices to their living rooms. Some are considered tech people who should know stuff like this could happen, but they just don't care or don't think it will happen to them. Somewhere there is an ex-Stasi officer who is thinking "I wish we were that good and had people fooled to voluntarily install listening devi…

1) It's always listening for a keyword, and then it starts recording. It's a voice interface for a computer.

2) Your phone is doing the same thing except for it follows you around everywhere you go and records your map location, what apps you use, who you are talking to and what your web searches are. Your phone isn't recording just what you say...its recording what you do and where you do it and when you do it. It's overwhelmingly more pervasive and invasive if you value privacy.

3) The utility of being able to interact with a computer via my voice wildly surpasses the risk. Even if it had been my voice sent to this random other person all they would get is 3000 recordings of me saying "Alexa, what is the weight of an elephant?" "Alexa, play Magic Sword." "Alexa, whats the weather?" My father-in-law thought these things were the devil until he realized he could ask it to play ANY SONG HE WANTED and it would do it. Now he is always unplugging ours and plugging it back in on the porch so he can use it out there.

Literally every article about home assistants brings out a number of people who continue to say how they can't understand how people could have this in their homes. Great, you can't understand it. Meanwhile, an enormous number of people find immense utility in home assistants otherwise they wouldn't be proliferating so wildly for this long.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#40

Post by samplesize »

tjoff wrote: post #14
sciurus wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of phones, aren't most people's smartphones already "an always on microphone in their homes"?

On the vast majority of devices it is not always on. It is not a nitpick. Accidentally recording or even intentionally recording is many orders of magnitude simpler when the device is supposed to always be listening. The fact that a single employee even could make the mistake mentioned in the articles is one example of why. Eventhough it also really does hint that the backend isn't up to par at amazon.

Don't the vast majority of iOS and Android phones listen for either a Siri or Google Assistant wake word?
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