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Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

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Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#41

Post by vectorEQ »

decebalus1 wrote: post #24
WAthrowaway wrote: post #20

You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…

I'm probably biased because I lived my early childhood behind the Iron Curtain but I can't for the life of me understand why someone would buy these. The cost-benefit is just not there.

the cost is there :D just no benefits, like most 'products' today... i can't imagine 1 unit being sold to anyone but some addicted person who needs to have all-the-new-things regardless of their use.

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#42

Post by melling »

WAthrowaway wrote: post #20

You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…

Groundhog Day on Hacker News 2 years and running:

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/groundhog-day-amazon...

No one cares if you don’t want to use it. No one needs to justify why they want to use one to you.

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#43

Post by pwython »

decebalus1 wrote: post #24
WAthrowaway wrote: post #20

You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…

I'm probably biased because I lived my early childhood behind the Iron Curtain but I can't for the life of me understand why someone would buy these. The cost-benefit is just not there.

I agree that your phone can delegate the same voice commands to your smart devices or do Q&A, but some of these devices are also decent speakers to stream music casually (eg. $75 Echo).

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#44

Post by sabujp »

tldr; uses raspberry pi to continuously feed the smart speaker white noise until it receives your new keyword, "ok alias" or "ok computer" or whatever. I think it's cool, there have been countless times when I didn't even say "ok google" and it has randomly woken up

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#46

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

WAthrowaway wrote: post #20

You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…

> I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies

This seems a lot like "old man yells at cloud". The same could be said for personal computers 40 years ago.

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#47

Post by ElijahLynn »

ars wrote: post #31

This is going to mess up the voice detection. It's keyed off of the original trigger word and knows who is talking to it so you get reminders and other items specific to that person.

That was my first thought too, you would have to train the device to use your voice sample for the whisper of "hey google", which is totally doable. My main concern is speed.

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#48

Post by runeb »

lotu wrote: post #37
goda90 wrote: post #19

So doesn't Alexa already not record until you say the trigger word? If we don't trust that that is the case, then sure this device covers that, but it doesn't change the fact that they are still collecting data on every command you issue to the device.

That is correct! Google, Amazon, and Apple despite having vast resources don't have the ability/desire to pay for the bandwidth, storage, and processing needed to have 24/7 recording and analysis from every smart device, especially when you realize that includes cell phones. Also it is ironic because all modern cellphones have the whole smart speaker thing built into them but people aren't freaking out about that in…

Couldn't the device use voice-to-text and upload the text, possibly tagged with which voice profile said what? The same goes for phones, obviously.

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#49

Post by tylerhou »

ars wrote: post #31

This is going to mess up the voice detection. It's keyed off of the original trigger word and knows who is talking to it so you get reminders and other items specific to that person.

What’s to stop you from configuring it so it says “Hey Google” differently based on the person talking?

Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy

#50

Post by JeremyBanks »

pwython wrote: post #43
decebalus1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably biased because I lived my early childhood behind the Iron Curtain but I can't for the life of me understand why someone would buy these. The cost-benefit is just not there.

I agree that your phone can delegate the same voice commands to your smart devices or do Q&A, but some of these devices are also decent speakers to stream music casually (eg. $75 Echo).

If you don't trust these devices, you probably wouldn't trust your phone either.
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