Woman Says Alexa Device Recorded Her Private Conversation and Sent It To Random Contact; Amazon Confirms the Incident (kiro7.com)

Gary Horcher, reporting for KIRO7: A Portland family contacted Amazon to investigate after they say a private conversation in their home was recorded by Amazon's Alexa -- the voice-controlled smart speaker -- and that the recorded audio was sent to the phone of a random person in Seattle, who was in the family's contact list. "My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying," said Danielle, who did not want us to use her last name. Every room in her family home was wired with the Amazon devices to control her home's heat, lights and security system. But Danielle said two weeks ago their love for Alexa changed with an alarming phone call. "The person on the other line said, 'unplug your Alexa devices right now,'" she said. '"You're being hacked.'" That person was one of her husband's employees, calling from Seattle. "We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house," she said. "At first, my husband was, like, 'no you didn't!' And the (recipient of the message) said 'You sat there talking about hardwood floors.' And we said, 'oh gosh, you really did hear us.'" Danielle listened to the conversation when it was sent back to her, and she couldn't believe someone 176 miles away heard it too. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said, "Amazon takes privacy very seriously. We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence. We are taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future."

Further reading: Amazon Admits Its AI Alexa is Creepily Laughing at People.

Comments

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

"Amazon takes privacy very seriously."

Obviously not.

Re:LOL

[jellomizer]

You can be very serious about privacy, but incompetent enough to not be able to do anything good about it.

It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[Rick Schumann]

You're nuts to have any of these devices in your house, or at the very least, plugged into power when you're not actively using it.

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Good.

I hope this keeps happening more and more. Maybe people will finally figure out that it's a bad idea to have stupid pointless crap like this.

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[RobinH]

I agree, but what's the difference between that and a cell phone? It's always on, can be always listening (must be since I can say "Ok Google" to wake it up) and has an internet connection and a list of contacts. No doubt it's also looking for keywords in the conversations it hears and logs that for targeting advertising.

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[Rick Schumann]

Then get a phone that has a removable battery and take the battery out when you want privacy. :-)
Or better yet don't have a smartphone in the first place, use the cheapest clamshell phone you can get that's good at making and receiving calls, and leave it turned off when you don't need it, too, just in case.

I've never owned a smartphone and never will, primarily because I really don't have a use for the capabilities, but also because I think they're too expensive for what you get, too expensive to operate (I don't want to give $100 or more a month to anyone just to have a phone), as well as a total swisscheese/collander so far as being secure goes (can't secure the browser properly, well-known ways to remotely hack them, tracks you everywhere via GPS, and so on). My life is just fine without one, too. Doesn't anyone else remember life before there were smartphones? We all lived just fine. ;-)

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[Anonymous Coward]

At least on the phone you can disable "OK Google" and still use the device for its primary purpose; if you disable Alexa's voice activation then the device is pretty useless.

It's really no surprise

[kelemvor4]

I'm really not one of those people who fear new technology or anything of the sort. However, how can it not eventually go horribly wrong when you plant recording devices in your own house that are designed specifically record and send the audio offsite. Eventually, there will be mistakes made with the audio or a hack, or something you said will violate some law "forcing" the company who has the recording to do some particular thing with it.

I'm all for new technology, but these things should have bad idea written all over them in bold print.... and I don't mean that to be specific to Amazon, either. Apple and Google's take on the things are just as bad.

More people should make an effort to understand what their personal electronics actually do before purchasing. We (as a society) need to incorporate classes on this sort of thing into primary education classes.

What about everything else with a microphone?

[Dzimas]

My phone has several very good microphones, as does my computer. Both devices also have extremely good cameras. It seems silly to focus on devices like Alexa and Google Home when they have relatively small market penetration and are less capable of spying on us than the cellular and GPS-equipped monitoring devices we slip into our pockets whenever we go *anywhere*.

Re:What about everything else with a microphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the administrator of my computer and my phone, both happen to be running open source OSs, and I make sure the phone is locked down and the computer's microphones are disabled. Even without their microphone and/or without an internet data connection, these devices are still useful.

On the other hand, Google Home and Alexa are devices explicitly made for relying info on us to 3rd parties. We can't manage them to the same level. We simply can't use them in any meaningful manner when they're not relying information.

Besides, OPs entire argument is faulty. So because there a possibility other devices have problems we should ignore and encourage faulty devices? The 'logic' can be continued: "No point in patching our systems, there must be some zero-day bugs". "No point in locking our doors so long as the windows are made of breakable glass". "Why bother arresting petty criminals so long as kingpins walk free?". We have to begin somewhere.

"Extremely rare occurrence"???

[mark-t]

Wanna be more specific, Amazon?

Like, actually say what really caused it to happen so that people can evaluate for themselves just how rare it is?

Because, you know... if your trustworthiness has already been called into question by evidence that a private conversation was eavesdropped on by your technology, then it makes no reasonable sense to simply take your word for it that whatever caused it to happen was genuinely "rare" at all.

I'm not saying that Amazon is necessarily lying here... but it makes no sense to actually trust what they are saying about this without being able to evaluate that claim's veracity for ourselves, and the longer they stay quiet, the sooner any honest skepticism can slide into outright disbelief.

Re:Wut

[Anonymous Coward]

The rare occurrence was that the audio was sent to a contact,not that it was always recording.

Re:Wut

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an extremely rare occurrence that the data Amazon wants from you accidentally goes to someone else instead. Who the fuck knows what she's doing if she's able to record an entire conversation and send it to someone. That's not what Alexa's supposed to do. She listens to a command or two and does something for you (plays a song, tells the temperature). Why does the damn thing even have this capability?! This is not a surprise to me in the slightest. And like I'm trying to illustrate here, it would be no surprise to me that Amazon was using these things for ill-gotten gains. Electronically parsing your conversations to find out what advertisements they want to put in front of you and more.

Obviously a mistake

[Registered Coward v2]

They meant to send the audio and contact info to advertisers of hardwood floors. The need to fix their algorithms so the audio gets sent to the correct advertiser.

active listening

[pr0t0]

I think the obvious difference is that these home assistants by Amazon, Apple, and Google are actively listening by design. I have the Google assistant turned off on my Pixel...I know because it keeps notifying me to turn it on. Now could the mic on my phone or pc be activated by an unscrupulous actor a la "Person of Interest"? Sure. But that seems far less likely than a software glitch in a device that's supposed to be listening to me.

Amazon is taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen in the future. I already took steps to ensure it would never happen by not buying a device like that.

Serious about privacy.

[Immerman]

You misunderstand - They *do* take privacy very seriously: it interferes with their profit margins and they're doing their best to eliminate it without triggering excessive consumer backlash.

As yourself this: Does this incident make you substantially less likely to buy or use one of their home surveillance devices, or were you already committed to one camp or the other? If there's no substantial change, then they're doing an effective job of limiting backlash.