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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

#121

Post by diminoten »

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…

Perhaps the source of your confusion lies in your misunderstanding of the actual risks involved.

A good indicator of that is your reference of the Stasi.

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

#122

Post by IshKebab »

pmontra wrote: post #79
stevecalifornia wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can opt out of basically every Google login/tracking in Android, except the Play store. I know because I'm logged out of everything and I disable location services. Google Maps keeps working. What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them.

It's to train their speech recognition and intent recognition systems. They probably also use the data to prioritise which queries they add support for.

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

#123

Post by TaylorAlexander »

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…

Hey I’m right there with you. I keep voice assistant disabled on my phone FWIW and my girlfriend and I both refuse to have voice assistant devices in our studio. Our upstairs roommates have the whole top floor of the house bugged. They mostly use it to turn on and off the lights. Downstairs we also have Hue lights but we use the app. I’d love a locally hosted assistant but I’m busy with so many projects and it’s low on my list.

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

#124

Post by Analog24 »

pmontra wrote: post #92
closetohome wrote: post #26

I'm having trouble getting worked up about this one. Yeah a privacy breach happened, but it was only one person's data exposed, and only to one other person. The only reason it made the news is because people are already paranoid about voice assistants.

The interesting fact is how much data they store with no apparent reason. They can perform speech to text on the fly and throw away the recording. Machine learning? Do it with people paid to talk to Alexa.

1.) It's not actually scalable to pay enough people to talk to Alexa to train these models.

2.) That data would not be representative of what real users are doing so it would bias the models.

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

#125

Post by bena »

stevecalifornia wrote: post #38
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…

It's rock and roll. You don't get it, but somebody does.

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

#126

Post by bena »

mcny wrote: post #108
pmontra wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can opt out of basically every Google login/tracking in Android, except the Play store. I know because I'm logged out of everything and I disable location services. Google Maps keeps working. What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them.

> What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them. Not that I have any insider information but a while back someone made a post on reddit about what baffles them about their work and they had a job where they basically listened to very short voice clips and saw something…

Are you trying to say these home assistants are basically mechanical Turks?

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

#127

Post by madrox »

danso wrote: post #8

I don’t understand how this problem of “human error” happened at a company like Amazon/AWS. Perhaps requests for Alexa info are rare enough that the internal interface for servicing such requests isn’t fully automated. But I’d be shocked if the process involved someone (low-level data entry person, or engineer) manually typing in a customer ID number.

I wouldn't be shocked at all. Internal tools are never as streamlined as you would think. On top of that, the tools for doing this are probably not that mature given that GDPR hasn't been around that long, nor do a majority of users take advantage of it.

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

#128

Post by onetimemanytime »

I feel for average, clueless Joe that has limited knowledge, but anyone that has average and above average knowledge of tech, deserves what he /she gets in these cases. How stupid or tech ignorant would you have to be to add a device that records you in your home?

Imagine, fights /sex with wife, lover, arguments with kids, talk about drug deals, tax evasion, leaving job, stealing neighbors home, cheating on husband /wife...WTF would you want to take the chance that a recording device is even within 10 000 feet of your home?

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

#129

Post by simion314 »

gnopgnip wrote: post #106
baxtr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get 1) and 3), but I don’t buy 2). Your phone works with Siri/any other assistant off. The connected speakers don’t. So the comparison doesn’t hold in my opinion.

Many phones work the same way, the phone is always listening for you to say ok siri.

Can't you turn of this feature on iOS? I don't have Google assistant on on my device.

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

#130

Post by Drdrdrq »

bootaccount wrote: post #116
pmontra wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can opt out of basically every Google login/tracking in Android, except the Play store. I know because I'm logged out of everything and I disable location services. Google Maps keeps working. What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command. There could be a number of reasons and I don't like any of them.

try disabling Google Maps location access permission. For me it triggers an endless loop requesting Location permission, rendering the app unusable. Google's always mining data behind the scenes and gapps are constantly phoning home, your "opt-out" preferences are meaningless.

Fortunately OSMand works reliably (and offline).
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