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The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

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Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#491

Post by cryptoegorophy »

TriangleEdge wrote: post #393
bentt wrote: post #351

I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with Amazon and Alexa. My wife has always been skeeved out by the devices, and I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. Whether this is true or not, it's obvious that the company can no longer be trusted. So yeah we're just going to ge…

Alexa listens to more then the wake word. I've had this recommend products on Amazon while my wife and I were having a conversation at the dinner table. It also recommended calling 911 while I was talking about fire. It's a spying device people willingly put in their homes for the convenience of a timer you can active with your voice. Edit: It could be that it activated mishearing "Alexa". I don't have hard evidence…

Yeah, what’s the best thing that can happen? It is just an Alexa device, and the worst? It leaks your data and spies on you. No thanks.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#492

Post by azinman2 »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #483
reverendsteveii wrote: post #481

"You know that boundary that we agreed upon a while back? We're gonna violate that boundary now. This is not an opportunity to negotiate a new agreement, we're gonna do whatever we want to you because we're big and you're little." Stuff like this is why I've cut amazon out of my life entirely. No more new devices, no more new purchases, cancelled prime, all of it gone.

Amazon is rarely the cheapest way to have a package delivered to your home in less than two days. You can often find people much cheaper if you don’t mind waiting a week or two. I reduced Amazon by 90% when I realized how much money I was wasting over 70-120 packages a year.

What’s the alternative? Everyone else has you pay for shipping, and it’s slower.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#493

Post by simpaticoder »

psunavy03 wrote: post #447
simpaticoder wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People don't really care about privacy People don't care about anything by default. They have to learn about threat-models and how to mitigate those threats. Usually this only happens after getting burned personally. (To learn from others is still learning, which people also don't care about.) This topic comes up in politics all the time. There is this hurt and offended reaction to people embracing authoritarianism,…

A columnist I read brought this up recently mocking a bunch of Silicon Valley execs supporting monarchism, presumably thinking they would be the educated elite monarchs. His point was that they hadn't invented anything new . . . monarchy is literally one of the oldest ideas in human history. Of course there's also the bit that historically, when unrest or a revolution comes, the people who think they can manipulate i…

To paraphrase Gandalf, "Do not bother saying we, Saruman. Only one hand can wield the One Ring."

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#494

Post by freejazz »

bgirard wrote: post #437
ethbr1 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should not the burden of proof be on Amazon to prove it's not always recording? In 2025, it feels like we're 5 to 10 years past the time a consumer should default to assuming their cloud-connected device isn't extracting the maximum possible revenue from them. Assume all companies are amoral, and you'll never be disappointed.

> Should not the burden of proof be on Amazon to prove it's not always recording? What's a satisfactory burden of proof for Amazon to meet here? There's only so much you can do to prove that something is NOT happening.

It's their product and their code, there is no reasonable way I can responsible for knowing what it does as opposed to Amazon, who is in complete control of the device and system. I can't even believe I have to explain this.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#495

Post by rchaud »

everdrive wrote: post #186

People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart ph…

It says right there in the official messaging that they're going to use this to feed some GenAI model.

How do you square that with people not caring about privacy? The feature as it existed was there specifically to address privacy concerns.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#496

Post by r00fus »

EGreg wrote: post #395
TriangleEdge wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexa listens to more then the wake word. I've had this recommend products on Amazon while my wife and I were having a conversation at the dinner table. It also recommended calling 911 while I was talking about fire. It's a spying device people willingly put in their homes for the convenience of a timer you can active with your voice. Edit: It could be that it activated mishearing "Alexa". I don't have hard evidence…

Just wait until people start buying Tesla’s optimus robots! Cheap and ubiquitous surveillance will be the norm in the future.

Telsa has an uncertain future, much less capability to actually pull off robots.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#497

Post by freejazz »

guntars wrote: post #456
nix0n wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim is not extraordinary. The anecdotes have added up, and it is now an ordinary claim.

Only in circles that don’t understand technology and frankly logic. To prove that it’s happening _one_ hacker needs to show that there’s constant flash drive / network traffic while the mic is enabled that also correlates with the entropy in the audio.

LOGIC he screamed as he threw his hands up in the air, LOGIC!!

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#498

Post by adra »

bgirard wrote: post #437
ethbr1 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should not the burden of proof be on Amazon to prove it's not always recording? In 2025, it feels like we're 5 to 10 years past the time a consumer should default to assuming their cloud-connected device isn't extracting the maximum possible revenue from them. Assume all companies are amoral, and you'll never be disappointed.

> Should not the burden of proof be on Amazon to prove it's not always recording? What's a satisfactory burden of proof for Amazon to meet here? There's only so much you can do to prove that something is NOT happening.

At the very least, they can provide a full log of all interactions and recording in an audit log. Have that verified with researchers conducting their own analysis on dial home activity and I think we'll be significantly closer to a good answer here about generalized mass capture of customer sensitive data. This still wouldn't be enough if you're worried about targetted spying, because we can't know when bad actors flip your device into spy aggressively mode unless you're auditing the device while targetted).

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#499

Post by gundmc »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #483
reverendsteveii wrote: post #481

"You know that boundary that we agreed upon a while back? We're gonna violate that boundary now. This is not an opportunity to negotiate a new agreement, we're gonna do whatever we want to you because we're big and you're little." Stuff like this is why I've cut amazon out of my life entirely. No more new devices, no more new purchases, cancelled prime, all of it gone.

Amazon is rarely the cheapest way to have a package delivered to your home in less than two days. You can often find people much cheaper if you don’t mind waiting a week or two. I reduced Amazon by 90% when I realized how much money I was wasting over 70-120 packages a year.

> Amazon is rarely the cheapest way to have a package delivered to your home in less than two days. You can often find people much cheaper if you don’t mind waiting a week or two.

But "waiting a week or two" seems directly at odds with delivered in less than 2 days. End users don't really care about shipping speed per service (unless it's a perishable or temperature-sensitive item). They care about how long it will take to arrive from the time the order is placed.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#500

Post by [deleted] »

bsenftner wrote: post #399
pmarreck wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tend to do worse That's a subjective evaluation, no? ;) I'm sure their parents would say they did way better on the religion/dogmatism ruler! > So many families around us homeschool This seems like the "gateway drug" to cult indoctrination and worries me. I'm going in completely the other way- My son (who will be 4 in June) is going to a good public school system here for socialization reasons , and I will suppleme…

I've met and worked with some of the most startlingly brilliant home schooled people, that are utterly crippled socially. They ended up being unable to work with others, despite on paper they ought to be leaders. People underestimate the critical value of childhood socialization. When a child finds they do not know the giant host of media nonsense other kids know intimately, they cannot participate in a huge amount o…

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