I suspect that individual PERSONs will NOT be the main eavedroppers on Alexa and other devices, but rather that normal use and automated background voice and music recognition by will be used for massive consumer data mining - a rapidly expanding industry. Wasn't Samsung cited for doing just that last year with their TV sets? Great opportunity for profit, and that's what develops systems like this and keeps them running and expanding. Most Millenials and later have few concerns about personal privacy and simply accept that their thoughts, feelings, preferences, activities and immediate location are public and actively promote this via Facebook, Twitter and many, many other avenues. The world is evolving yet again. While we do like to complain about it, it was the very communications (and database/software) industry and the professionals in it that made this all possible. I.e. many of US did it to our own children. Did NOT see THAT coming! I suspect that there will be a backlash sometime in the future. The pedulum of public opinion and preferences always swings back and forth in action and reaction, often to extremes.
If the listeners are interested in listening to my kids fighting over what to tell alexia then they have more patience than me.
I asked Alexa " who da man ? " the answer I got was, "Sorry, I don't know the answer to that question. " The XYL asked Alexa, " Who da man?" The answer she got was " It's YOU of course ". That was embarrassing, but still funny ! 73's de KB8OTK
So let me inject a bit of common sense into the "MUH PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS ARE BEIN' MONITORED!" discussions. This is applicable only to Amazon Echo and Echo Dots, as those are the ones I know (but I'd extrapolate to Google Home and others, too, based on technology, networking, etc.). Just so you know my background, I have worked in IT for a couple of decades. I'm a programmer, systems administrator, and network administrator. And I currently work at a company which makes voice recognition software. So I know how this stuff works. I know what they can and can't do. As proof, I have 3 Amazon Echo Dots in my house currently. I've developed a test Alexa skill so I know the specific Amazon tech somewhat, and I'm going to develop an Alexa skill to interface with my radios. And one thing Amazon can't do is record and stream everything you say back to Amazon. They just don't have the power or bandwidth to do it. I'll give a brief explanation. The Dots have a very tiny CPU in them. It can recognize four pre-programmed wake words: Alexa, Amazon, Echo, and Computer. And it'll only respond to the currently-configured wake word. You can change this and it's one-at-a-time, so you can't use "Echo, do X" if "Alexa" is the current wake word. If it hears one of those, it lights up the ring to blue and streams the next few seconds of audio to Amazon for decoding. If it decodes a command, it acts on it; if it doesn't decode a valid command from the audio, it beeps and that's that. You can use the Alexa app on your phone to see what it heard, what it decoded, and what actions it took. And if you're worried about "Amazon is recording everything", you can watch your network bandwidth and traffic. No, they're not. As I said, when it detects the wake word, it starts streaming a few seconds of audio. So, yes, they listen to and decode that. Otherwise, there is no audio data going to Amazon. This can be proven with a network monitoring tool like Wireshark, if you want to see it for yourself. tl;dr: Amazon isn't spying on you 24/7. Relax.
And it's pretty cool to set up something like an Alexa-activated power strip and Alexa-activated lights and say "Alexa, turn on the shack" and have everything come to life.
Yes, the device is currently not streaming everything. The older ones have been p0wned already, just waiting for the next CVE to come out where another exploit has been found. In that discussion the concern was raised that indeed the constant recording may not be an issue, but collecting of certain words and submitting as text might. Nothing has been tested/ proven at this point. I plan to take one of mine and open it up to look inside and poke around. Also looking a bit deeper at traffic. If anything, a nice research project and at $50 a pop not a big deal if blue smoke comes out. In general the problem is that security as usual is an afterthought as it's complicated and can't easily be understood by the new super developers we get out of bootcamps who can hack together a website with Javascript. That being said, everybody making smart comments here while still running Windows XP: you got bigger problems than Amazon Echo listening to you.
Sorry. I'm with the anti-spying lot. These things are already providing evidence in criminal cases, due to their 'always listening' operation. Useful, of course, in those circumstances. But less comfortable for those of us who simply want the front door to be the boundary between public and private.
I'm with the 'bore them to death and they will go away lot'. I think our paranoia is an indication of a self-centered state of mind in which we think everything WE INDIVIDUALLY DO is important and therefore should be limited to us until WE make it public. The fact is that if you are anything but a 'mommy's basement dweller' (a new term I learned on Zed this week!) you interact with people and the 'spying' is part of the act of being social. Basically, no one cares who and what you do unless it hurts other people. Having said that, its probably a good idea to keep the cell phone cameras out of the bedroom, bathroom, and so on. And again: try this-- "Alexa, who da man?"
