131–140 of 424 posts
Does this qualify as a GDPR violation?
“By storing the passwords in clear text, the company knowingly violated its duty to ensure data security in the processing of personal data in accordance with GDPR Article 32(1)(a),”
[0] https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/11/27/german-chat-site-f...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Encrypted or not, an audio stream should not be difficult to identify.
If they batch compress and upload, it wont be a stream. It could be aes-256 lzma2 compressed chunks. Using the right codec, they could likely upload a hour of audio in a few hundred kbytes. I have seen some demos of highly bw optimized codecs. Here are some staring points. [1] I would go with Opus. My voice chat server uses that. [1] - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/167533/best-voice-compre...
But at the same time, you're convinced that you would notice if your phone was slipping out these kilobytes as part of its usual communication?
It seems to me that you've just arbitrarily picked a level of paranoia where you've decided that this can definitely happen with the Alexa, but won't happen with your phone. Your proud paranoia isn't applied consistently.
> "Using these files, it was fairly easy to identify the person involved and his female companion; weather queries, first names, and even someone’s last name enabled us to quickly zero in on his circle of friends,” according to the report. “Public data from Facebook and Twitter rounded out the picture.” Please keep in mind the next time you or a friend says "well, what do I care if Amazon knows when I ask to turn the…
This example doesn't really persuade me from removing Alexa either. I don't care if Amazon knows who I am. They have my credit card and billing address anyway. I cannot think of 1 single thing I talk about in my own home that I feel uncomfortable with Amazon knowing.
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…
2) The chances of a mishap like this happening to a single user are very very small.
3) Even if a mishap like this occurs, the chances of it causing meaningful harm for most people are small.
The fact that you are baffled by this phenomenon says a lot more about you than it does about users of these products.
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.
Steve Gibson did a wireshark investigation of an Alexa, it is NOT always transmitting. Your assertion that "nobody can prove that" is rather absurd.
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 silently introduce at anytime for any device.
Steve Gibsons "analysis" means nothing.
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…
I agree that the decisions that me and others are making are hugely damaging collectively but that is a different issue.
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…
If they can't see it they're fine with it.
For example, if someone is walking in the mall they're being filmed by a dozen cameras.
But if you walk behind them with your own handheld camera photographing them they will get VERY angry and freak out and start yelling at you.
Yet nothing has changed...
Same thing with Facebook. People don't mind giving their data to Facebook but if Zuck was staring over their shoulders reading their email they would be upset.
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…
Point 2: My phone, an iPhone, offers a way to turn off the keyword-listening functionality - and presents this switch during initial setup. It also offers a way to turn off all tracking functionality. Apple has no financial gain from lying about this.
Point 3: This comes back to point 1. If you don't know what and when the assistant is listening to, you have no idea what phrases are being collected and shipped off. Also, there are plenty of studies floating about the internet about how "anonymized" search engine queries have been collected, studied, and in many cases paint very personal portraits of the people doing searches.