Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
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Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
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Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#2If, as the article claims, my phone can be used to eavesdrop on any conversation I'm having, "even when the phone has been turned off", what is the added attack vector of a home assistant?
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#3Oh the horror!
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#4If, as the article claims, my phone can be used to eavesdrop on any conversation I'm having, "even when the phone has been turned off", what is the added attack vector of a home assistant?
If I get that right, using your phone to spy on you is a targeted action that targets you if you are of interest (sidenote, it's funny how many people deny being of interest even if they could build you a rocket program if you kidnapped and motivated them).
A home assistant on the other hand is always on, listening and profiling its vicinity. So there is a large difference, not if you're under attack but rather if you are not at that moment.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#5It's funny, a few weeks ago someone posted a story of how their Google Home box was recording and saving the data at all times, and he once he complained, Google quickly came and took the box and gave him a new one which was bug free. I was down voted for saying that it wasn't a "bug", but rather, the only bug was that he was able to see what was actually occuring all the time, and that his new box will work just as it was always intended to work, constant surveillance..
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#6Surely it's possible to sniff what's being sent back to Amazon's servers? If Amazon are lying and they are storing/analysing everything the Echo hears, surely this would be easy to prove?
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#7There's a lot of conjecture in this article. While I'm sure most voice assistant makers would love to be able to tag multiple voices simultaneously in realtime and perhaps even in the background, it's simply not there in today's technology.†
The Alexa works in a crowded environment because it has directional microphones and facing the Alexa makes a big difference.
The Google Home assistant does differentiate requests based on voice pattern, but from my testing it actually only analyzes the word "Google". So person A can say "Okay", person B can say "Google", and person C can say "What's the weather?" and the Google Home will recognize person B (this might have changed since I did my testing, so don't quote me on that).
All this said, yeah of course any company can spy on you, and honestly Alexa is the least of your concerns. Laptops have 1-2 microphones built in. Phones have 3+ microphones. A lot of monitors and "smart" TVs come with microphones. Your intercom system can be wired into, and you can most likely hack into digitally based ones as well. Don't even get me started on IoT devices from non-IT companies.
A lot of malicious things can be done with technology today, but Alexa is most likely the safest device of the examples I gave. So yes – stay vigilant – but don't ignore the more obvious vulnerabilities in your home.
† There are some examples that prove we will be able to get there eventually (like Honda's ASIMO which has a demo of three people asking for different things at the same time), but nothing of the like has been seen in uncontrolled/noisy environments.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#8Oh the horror!
I always wonder, people who leave snide comments like this on privacy related issues:
What is you stance on your own freedom and independence and those of others around you, who might have not want large parts of their lives digitized and centrally analyzed.
See, because it's one thing if you upload your own data and have it analyzed to your heart's content, I think you should be free to do that. But another to do it with unsuspecting strangers, it's infringing on my freedom not to have that done to me.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#9If, as the article claims, my phone can be used to eavesdrop on any conversation I'm having, "even when the phone has been turned off", what is the added attack vector of a home assistant?
If I get that right, using your phone to spy on you is a targeted action that targets you if you are of interest (sidenote, it's funny how many people deny being of interest even if they could build you a rocket program if you kidnapped and motivated them). A home assistant on the other hand is always on, listening and profiling its vicinity. So there is a large difference, not if you're under attack but rather if yo…
I don't see much of a difference here. Both are devices that listen to their surroundings. Both can be used to target the devices owner (if they are near their device) or to profile the devices vicinity. The only difference I see is that the phone location changes more often and that the owner is probably more likely to be near it.
I guess people are just more aware of the fact that home assistants listen to everything, so they associate a greater danger with those. Also, everyone is of interest in the eyes of advertising/data collection companies.
Re: Why You Should Never Buy an Amazon Echo or Even Get Near One
#10I really hate articles like this, because on the one hand I'm a total privacy nut and believe that the passive of surveillance of modern society has a terrifying and terrible chilling effect that really could end civil society as we know it.
But I am quadriplegic.
This means that without these devices I would be unable to control my house the way I do, because of the moment I have about 4 Amazon echoes, Google home and various other ways of monitoring me (and controlling the house). It really really chaps my arse to have to give up this much personal information to be able to control my house, but I honestly don't see another way of squaring the circle.
Not directly related to the article, just a perspective I thought some of you might find interesting.
Edited to add: When I say I hate these articles, what I meant was not that they shouldn't be written because I think they are very valuable. I meant that they make me feel sad about the current state of surveillance on the Internet.