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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

#161

Post by JeremyBanks »

falcolas wrote: post #140
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…

Point 1: Keyword triggers and is actually said are miles apart, as shown by the Alexa creepy laugh episode. There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. Not to mention the Google play incident where a poor wiring job made the devices think the "enable assistant" button was constantly being pressed. Point 2: My phone, an iPhone, offers a way to turn off the keywor…

> There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it.

I know this isn't the kind of certainty you're looking for, but Google Home and Alexa both allow you to enable audio cues for when they start and stop recording. I find this helpful from an accessibility perspective, but the privacy-conscious may also appreciate the indicator.

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

#162

Post by snazz »

falcolas wrote: post #140
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…

Point 1: Keyword triggers and is actually said are miles apart, as shown by the Alexa creepy laugh episode. There is no practical way of knowing when Alexa has heard a keyword and recorded content around it. Not to mention the Google play incident where a poor wiring job made the devices think the "enable assistant" button was constantly being pressed. Point 2: My phone, an iPhone, offers a way to turn off the keywor…

Point 2: Although you’re right about the application processor side of your phone, you cannot disable a significant amount of tracking functionality built into the baseband/modem. Your cell carrier or ISP can track you the same way that Google could on an Android device. On the other hand, iPhone basebands usually don’t have DMA, while other phone manufacturers allow the modem to access application processor RAM.

The iPhone has a lot less tracking built in and has much better privacy controls than Android with Google Play Services, but there are still some avenues for different companies to track you and to have a lot of control over your device.

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

#163

Post by snazz »

drewmol wrote: post #109
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.

>except the Play store Workaround: 1)Install F-Droid (f-droid.org) 2) Install Yalp Store from F-Droid

Even if you do this, on a standard Android device, there is still Google Play Services installed, which has every permission available on your device. You have to install a fresh custom ROM like LineageOS without GApps to avoid this.

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

#164

Post by sushisource »

bootaccount wrote: post #137
michaelcampbell wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Gibson did a wireshark investigation of an Alexa, it is NOT always transmitting. Your assertion that "nobody can prove that" is rather absurd.

there's nothing stopping from Alexa recording content locally and transmitting it with a traditional request once activated. Also, there's no reason for Amazon to want a constant stream of Alexa data hitting their cloud services. The goal is to mine and extract valuable data about users to build profiles, ideally you'd want to do that on-device and send up the most valuable bits. These are also capabilities they can…

Except, you know, memory - of which these devices don't have a ton.

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

#165

Post by bduerst »

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.

>What I don't understand is why they have to store voice recordings instead of deleting them once they understand the vocal command.

They don't have to. You can disable it at https://myactivity.google.com

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

#166

Post by jedberg »

LinuxBender wrote: post #90
jedberg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody can prove that. You guys are way to paranoid. They're a public company and they are constantly under audit. They have explicitly stated in their white papers that the device has two computers, one that just listens for the "Alexa" keyword that activates the other one for signal processing. Do you really think they would lie on those white papers? The government would be so far up their ass with fines it woul…

Audits of controls are about ensuring the longevity of the business. They are entirely orthogonal to ethics or business models. And yes, I am proudly paranoid. History and experience have confirmed the need for my paranoia for many decades.

> Audits of controls are about ensuring the longevity of the business.

You must not have suffered a SOX audit before. Part of the audit is technical.

Also, the SEC greatly frowns upon lying about your business.

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

#167

Post by cblades »

LinuxBender wrote: post #156
michaelcampbell wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Gibson did a wireshark investigation of an Alexa, it is NOT always transmitting. Your assertion that "nobody can prove that" is rather absurd.

Steve was not thinking this through. I can batch compress chunks of audio and lazy upload them when I think nobody is around. A listening device could probably even guess when you are not going to be using your internet connection.

You can filter the captured traffic for anything coming from Alexa's IP or mac, or transmitting to any amazon-owned server.

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

#168

Post by grawprog »

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…

>The utility of being able to interact with a computer via my voice wildly surpasses the risk.

How?

Risks:

Willingly putting a proprietary device designed to listen to you and watch you, created by a company that exists only to maximize it's shareholders profits by either selling you things, advertising to you or collecting and selling data about you in order to do those first two things better, into your home to constantly watch and listen to everything that goes on.

Utility:

Control a computer by talking to it...

For me at least....that risk far outweighs whatever utility i migbt get by being able to speak to a computer and honestly, if i really needed it that bad i would just set up my computer with voice recognition and control software. It's existed for a while now. I remember playing with it when i was a kid...it sucked...but that was more than 15 years ago.

The only real novelty of alexa is that it'a a standalone box that answers you back.

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

#169

Post by cblades »

falcolas wrote: post #147
LinuxBender wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Nobody can prove that. It's always listening and you have to assume always recording and transmitting. 2) My phone is a $12 throw away that speaks voice and sms (text). 3) Loose lips sink ships.

Actually, quite the contrary has been proven to point 1: both for Alexa (the spooky laugh episode) and Google Play (the "always pressed" button episode). I almost think that the burden of proof that things aren't being sent is a valid expectation in this point. And that proof needs to be re-confirmed with each firmware update to ensure a bug hasn't caused the behavior to change.

Those aren't examples of the contrary, those are examples of in-precise recognition. That's miles away from being the same thing as "always recording".

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

#170

Post by ryandrake »

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…

> 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.

It feels weird to feel out of touch. I’ve been a computer/technology enthusiast my whole life, and used to proudly early-adopt all sorts of crazy gadgetry. But the older I get, the fewer things coming out of Silicon Valley appeal to me, and the less I understand the use cases. I just have to shake my head and accept that they are somehow useful to a lot of people and that the idea of a cool useful product is changing.

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