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Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

kiro7.com

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Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#81

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

I agree completely. Being able to say things out loud and have things happen is cool I guess. However, that doesn't mean I want to give all my data away and it to be stored in some black box on the Internet. I want control of my data.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. > People are voluntarily paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. > I’m so out of touch with this wo…

I never thought that voice control would be that useful until I had my daughter... being able to turn on the white noise, turn off the tv, play her music, etc while having my hands full of toddler is very useful.

Why do you want to turn on white noise?

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#83
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevermind that we are already in a world where you can play any song you like from the wireless computer you carry in your pocket. That's not convenient enough. /s

That pocket computer also has all the same potential threats to privacy. Somehow nobody cares about them, though.

> That pocket computer also has all the same potential threats to privacy. Somehow nobody cares about them, though.

This is just whataboutism.

We can complain about Amazon in a thread about Amazon without having to tackle a whole different issue.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#84

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

Controlling your devices with voice is nice and I can totally understand people wanting it .. it is just that you don't have real control over it. And about tapped .. well, I don't consider any conversation as private, when there is a Smartphone around.

> I don't consider any conversation as private, when there is a Smartphone around.

Is there nothing you've ever said about anybody while in the vicinity of a smartphone that you wouldn't have said to their face?

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#85
post #15

Summary of vague technical details (which may be all we hear about this): > an Alexa engineer investigated ... they said 'our engineers went through your logs, and they saw exactly what you told us, they saw exactly what you said happened, and we're sorry.' He apologized like 15 times in a matter of 30 minutes and he said we really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, this is something we need to fix!" > th…

> The device did not audibly advise that it was preparing to send the recording, something it’s programmed to do. Apparently it's not programmed to do that. Unless this was a hardware glitch or cosmic-ray event.

Interesting. I had heard that cosmic rays are how "real" programmers do it. Perhaps there is something to that after all.

https://xkcd.com/378/

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#86
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. > People are voluntarily paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. > I’m so out of touch with this wo…

Not having to use light switches or a remote does not seem comparable to mobile internet connectivity.

Of course: convenience!

Mankind has made countless decisions to trade convenience for some degree of personal freedom. I can live without mobile internet - its just so convenient to have it. Voice control for home appliances is exactly the same.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#87

What actually happened: Alexa misinterpreted some voice commands and activated a "call" skill. The people involved and local news got very excited and escalated this into a conspiracy story. Amazon takes customer privacy EXTREMELY seriously. There's no way a team would get the "ok" to build a skill that randomly records private conversations then sends them to a random contact. It also doesn't make any logical sense…

It's pretty clear to me that this was an inadvertent activation of the call skill. The equivalent of butt-dialing someone from your phone. I get random voicemails from people all the time that are clearly recordings of their phone in their pocket.

If that's the case, then you need to provide additional features to reduce the chances of this happening. Longer and more unique wake word options, or more complex and deliberate confirmations before the call is placed. Something that a user can enable if they're worried about this sort of thing.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never thought that voice control would be that useful until I had my daughter... being able to turn on the white noise, turn off the tv, play her music, etc while having my hands full of toddler is very useful.

Why do you want to turn on white noise?

It can help babies sleep. Supposedly it simulates the noise in the womb
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