Don't forget about the Morse code skills. I worked with the developer of the Morse Coder skill but it still needs some work. Fun ! https://www.amazon.com/Kay-Lerch-Morse-Coder/dp/B01G4F0B4O
KG7ZFC: I quite agree with you - Wireshark is your friend. You don't even need Wireshark - a little bit of paper and pencil calculation will convince you that they can't be streaming everything 24/7. That is not my concern, and never has been. And I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't think the boogy-man is coming, and I don't think Google and Amazon are evil. Depending upon your definition of evil. And whether I think they're spying depends on your definition of spying. I have spent many years (professionally) analyzing small snippets of audio in an effort to deduce whether certain events are taking place. My concern about devices like Alexa is what can be deduced from the "few seconds" of audio that is streamed back to Amazon when gigaflops (petaflops?) of computing power are brought to bear. In those few seconds one might determine whether others are in the house (and maybe their gender) and whether I am listening to music or watching television. They might determine that I have a dog, or that I live near a busy street. I don't care if you know that - it's stuff that my neighbors might determine simply from casual observation. If we're talking on 20m and you ask me what music I listen to I'll tell you, and we'll talk about how Mark Knopfler is the greatest guitarist in the history of the world. But it's none of Amazon's business. I don't know if Google or Amazon engage in this practice. But there are many thousands of sensors sitting in our homes that make it possible. That, to me, is the privacy issue. 73, K4DSP
On another thread, folks are outraged at how NCIS portrayed hams as paranoid, anti-government, etc. Seems here, they are proving it. I have 3 amazon dot devices in my house. I also have monitored their internet usage up and down. When they are not in use - dispute my radio playing, TV on, or my wife and I talking, there is no data transferred. I bet every almost everyone reading this has a ham transmitter - HT, boat anchor, whatever - or more (perhaps many). It has a microphone attached to a transmitter - yikes! But hopefully you understand how they work, and that they don't just transmit on their own... hopefully. Understanding how these things work, and testing is key. Simply declaring it a threat without bounds is naive - your HT, cellphone, computer, tablet, etc. all have the capability of "bugging" you. Landline telephones which have been around for over 100 years brought this possibility into the home - a microphone attached to wires connected to a central office! How many of you don't use the phone? Your obviously on the Internet, so you hopefully understand the risks there... To properly understand security is to understand and evaluate a spectrum of risks and rewards. A single device isn't the issue, it's how that device is used, deployed and managed, updated, etc. Using a credit card vs. Apple pay, for example, addresses some security issues while introducing new ones. These days, most folks (including myself) have had personal information compromised because a big organisation failed to safeguard our data - or stored it when they should have. Equifax, Target, Uber, and many others have lost data to hackers because that's where the valuable data is. It's like the quote from Willie Sutton, “I rob banks because that's where the money is.” Hackers hack these organisations because that's where the valuable data is. Not my Echo. I use security cameras, as do a lot of private citizens as well as business and governments. Does the camera "security" outweigh the risks? These are things you need to ask yourself; if it catches someone steeling packages off your front porch, or better, deters it from happening in the first place, it's a benefit, right? But it can also be a liability if it blows your alibi out of the water when you say you got home at 10pm, when your didn't till 1am... to your wife, the police, etc. As for the only court case I have seen on Alexa, the defendant OK'd Amazon to release the data. https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/07/amazon-echo-murder/ Perhaps if something was recorded, it will vindicate the defendant... or not. But really not any different than security camera footage, cell phone records, computer search history, etc.?
Should be interesting once internet-over-powerlines is up and your new tv connects and starts transmitting, whether you want it to or not.
It doesn't add up. If the device is not recording unless woken, then they are just stabbing in the dark without a clue. What are they hoping to find? "Alexa, how can I disposed of a dead body?" Just tried with Siri : "I used to know the answer to this ... " was the response What Amazon will record are the actual commands given to improve the speech recognition algorithm. But by then it has been sent to Amazon already.
How is it not a true statement? Do YOU have absolutely correct and verifiable [links please] knowledge of what Amazon is actually doing? Do you work in their IT department or something? Please - enlighten me Dave W7UUU
I wasn't saying your statement (if you wanna call it that) was not true, rather was I commenting on the level of understanding of the issue at hand applied. That's a difference. As far as me knowing internals of Amazon Echo operations, I could tell you but then I'd have to .... you know how the rest goes . I can happily say that I do not work for Amazon. As for what Amazon is doing, only Amazon knows that (and the NSA of course). My own concern around those devices revolve around a different attack vector.
Fair enough. But I'm not going to have one any time soon so I'm OK on that side of things. What is the attack vector you are concerned about? I'm assuming a 3rd party hack sort of thing? Dave W7UUU
Do you have a laptop? A cell phone? A VoIP phone? A tablet? Don't they all connect to the Internet? Don't they all have microphones (and cameras for some)?
