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

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why I only use Alexa in my bathroom where I do not typically have private conversations.

Re: LOL

[PolygamousRanchKid]

That is why I only use Alexa in my bathroom where I do not typically have private conversations.

Your health insurance company will be canceling your policy real soon because of . . . "excessive flatulence" . . .

Re:LOL

[jellomizer]

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

Re: LOL

[jellomizer]

Sure you can. We see it all the time. You see posts from stupid know it alls like me. Who thinks they know what they are talking about, and honestly believe it. Only to be on a different topic, or working the wrong tree.

In terms of security and privacy. Amazon was probably focusing on making sure a hacker can't get into the device to spy on people and their servers are secure so on the right people can access the data. That in itself is a major undertaking. What seems like what happened is a bug in the system that couldn't determine that this wasn't meant to be called out.

Amazon is serious, but they were ignorant on what to do about it.

Re:LOL

[Obfuscant]

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

Or you can be serious about privacy and design a complicated system that is intended to operate on voice commands that sometimes gets things wrong.

The Fine Article is so completely devoid of details as to be useless. There is not a single mention of why this happened. Did the owners say something that sounded like "Alexa", and something that sounded like "send this to Frank"? Or was it something else? The Alexa I have consistently responded when it heard someone refer to Alexi Lalas on the TV. It also responded when the police scanner reported that a Lexus was being pulled over. This doesn't seem like an outrageous mistake to me. Did those people say something that was misinterpreted?

This is how bad the article is: it first says the recording was sent to a random person in Seattle, THEN it says it was someone on their contact list. Random, not random. Same sentence.

Maybe someday /. will start linking to technically relevant information in technical stories, instead of clickbait TV station pages.

Re:LOL

[mishehu]

What gets me is this: how can they be very serious about privacy when discussing a product of theirs whose raison d'etre is to spy on people in its audible vicinity.

Re:LOL

[farble1670]

The Fine Article is so completely devoid of details as to be useless. There is not a single mention of why this happened. Did the owners say something that sounded like "Alexa", and something that sounded like "send this to Frank"? Or was it something else? The Alexa I have consistently responded when it heard someone refer to Alexi Lalas on the TV. It also responded when the police scanner reported that a Lexus was being pulled over. This doesn't seem like an outrageous mistake to me. Did those people say something that was misinterpreted?

I don't have an Alexa so perhaps you could explain. It has a function where you can record a conversation then send the recorded conversation to a contact?

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

[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

[butchersong]

You could make a similar argument against the desktop computer or laptop in your home both of which are likely to have microphones and webcams attached. I think in this case the difference is that we essentially have installed monitoring software onto the device but have very little control or knowledge over what it is doing. The phone to me may be compromised but isn't inherently so. At least, not to the degree that these devices are.

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.

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[joe_frisch]

Yes, but there was a time when the idea of carrying a tracking device with you all the time would have been considered unthinkable as well.

The problem is that there are so many attacks on privacy that trying to resist any one starts to feel pointless. Its too easy for people to tell themselves that each additional attack isn't really changing things that much, so they might as well give in in order to get the benefits. I won't be surprised to find that most people will have continuous audio and video, and possibly medical surveillance in the next decade or so - each individual step having seemed reasonable but the endpoint being terrifying.

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[Rick Schumann]

They've been indoctrinated by corporate society that 'Sharing is normal, privacy means you have something to hide, people with something to hide are BAD and WRONG and probably CRIMINALS or TERRORISTS or PEDOPHILES or other UNDESIRABLES, don't you want to be ACCEPTED and NORMAL?'. Of course all of that is bullshit, normal people after a certain age develop a desire for privacy. They've also been convinced that nothing about their lives is worth anything therefore it's not worth protecting the privacy of anyway, so you're trading something worthless (your privacy) for convenience (devices in your pocket and in your home that can easily be used for surveillance purposes if the manufacturer so chooses). Furthermore nobody actually reads EULAs so if it says anything about collecting data (personalized or not) they don't know -- and they don't care, either, because again they've been convinced that 'privacy' is bad and wrong and worthless anyway so why should they even care if someone is collecting (ostensibly) non-personally-identifiable data on them anyway? Never mind that Google or Amazon or Microsoft or whoever could be collecting very much personally identifiable data on every one of their users and lying through their teeth about it, hiding the fact, and either selling the data to 'third party partner companies' or using it in their own marketing departments to sell you more things that likely will also spy on you and collect more data on you.

Think about all the devices that aren't smartphones or 'voice assistants' that also collect data on you all the time: 'fitness bands' like FitBit, video game consoles like Xbox 360 that have to be connected to the Internet in order to function at all, even VoIP phones might be capable of listening in on their environment, and so on. Some people have raised concerns about wirelessly-connected 'smart meters' for electricity, natural gas, and even water usage, which give realtime use data to the utility companies; patterns of people's lives can be extrapolated from that realtime data, determining when people are home, when they're awake or asleep, and even close guesses as to what appliances they might be using and for how long. So-called 'Internet of Things' devices, like 'smart refrigerators' that even have cameras inside them, ostensibly so you can remotely determine what you need to get at the grocery store; how easy would it be for Samsung or whoever to monitor and track what people buy to eat, and how much they eat, by tapping into this? Use your imagination for any other 'IoT' appliances always connected to the Internet; 'Nest' devices are a prime example also of something that can track and monitor the patterns of someone's life. All in the name of 'convenience', and people pay cash money for the 'privilege' of potentially being under someone's microscope.

Then there's money itself. How many people do you know who pay cash for things anymore? I do, for security reasons mainly (breaches of payment systems and even banks themselves pretty much every week anymore), but also to stop anyone tracking my purchasing habits. Every time people pay with plastic, or with their smartphone, someone knows when, where, what, and how much they're buying. If someone uses a 'loyalty club card' somewhere like Safeway, they're agreeing to having very much personally-identifiable information on what they're buying above and beyond what can be extrapolated just from bare EFT/POS data; try asking Safeway or anywhere else that has these 'club cards' to see the EULA/Privacy notice, and they'll give you a blank stare, they know nothing about it, and you're wide open to their company when you use their 'club card' when purchasing. More privacy frittered away, all to save a few pennies.

There may never be an end to this, not at least until there is such a massive data breach or scandal involving people's private data, that the majority of people finally wake up and decide enough is enough. But there was the Equifax data breach, that effectively splayed open the lives of at le

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[cascadingstylesheet]

My life is just fine without one, too. Doesn't anyone else remember life before there were smartphones? We all lived just fine. ;-)

Yeah, I do. I used to brag about not having one.

It was fine, mostly ... except for all that getting lost, and getting stuck in traffic jams that I could have avoided had I only known. And never having a camera handy when I needed one. And not being able to instantly compare prices while in a store. And ... and ... and ...

Now, a home device, on the other hand, designed for solely voice interface, I'm not seeing the benefit. I'm home, after all. I have a PC and can do precisely what I want, without an insanely clunky interface. And more importantly not do what I don't want.

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[nmb3000]

I was 100% in the same boat as you, up until about 4 months ago. I had an ancient feature phone with a $20/mo unlimited minutes plan and was pretty happy... until the battery fully died and I couldn't find a replacement.

Since not owning a smartphone had become more and more painful in small ways and I had to buy a new phone anyway, I decided to give in and give it a try. I bought a 64GB Moto G5s for $250 unlocked and got the cheapest smartphone plan Verizon offers (best coverage in my area) at $50 / mo.

I still barely use the smartphone capabilities, and have spent time changing things to increase the privacy from the (terrible) defaults, but overall it has been okay. Is it more expensive? Yes, but not quite as bad as I thought it would be. And there have been a few times when it's been handy to have Internet access (maps and Google) while away from my computer, though I still don't waste time with social media crap and will not install any apps that are ad-supported or have unacceptable device access requirements.

Just something to think about.

Re:It's not paranoia if it actually happens

[b0s0z0ku]

Meanwhile, I just pushed the "UP" button on my A/C twice. Why does it need to be connected to a PC, Alexa, or anything else other than an outlet?

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.

Re:It's really no surprise

[anegg]

I'm not sure that the people who are providing the "voice command" interfaces are motivated to provide a local-only response capability. If they aren't, then we'll continue to see cloud-based behavior even if the smarts can be self-contained. I have an iPhone, and it has a "voice dial" feature that doesn't require Siri, so that is what I use in order to keep things local. Having Siri turned on just results in a bad experience when I'm in a poor data service area, anyway.

Re:It's really no surprise

[Rob Y.]

The problem with these things - and the entire new generation of AI devices is that they're not AI. They're little Turing tests that 'act' like they're intelligent (if you ask them the right questions posed the right way) with no actual intelligence whatsoever. There's going to have to be a quantum leap (and probably a whole new approach) in order to build truly intelligent machines, and in the meantime, we need to stop referring to digital assistants, self-driving cars and the like as such. It's misleading - possibly intentionally. Face it, nobody would trust a hopped up Roomba to drive them around town, but Tesla is already putting those things on the streets. With Google, Uber and a host of others plotting the same.

Re:It's really no surprise

[Obfuscant]

why on earth can't any of these assistance interpret commands locally 15 years later?

There is a big difference between a word recognition program like Dragon and a speech recognition and response system like Alexa.

Dragon worked great because, IIRC, you had to train it to your voice. All it did was convert speech to text. YOU had to speak the commands exactly the way the program you were controlling wanted them. If it got a word wrong, YOU had to correct it.

Alexa has to figure out the words AND what to do with them.

If you said to Dragon "tell me a Henny Youngman joke", it would type "tell me a Henny Youngman joke" into whatever program you were using. If you say that to Alexa, it has to try to figure out what a "Henny Youngman" is, what a joke is, that you want it to tell you something, and then tell you. (It can't -- it doesn't know what a "Henny Youngman" is. Or Steven Wright. Stoopid monkey.)

Re:It's really no surprise

[danbert8]

Based on my experience, that is untrue of Alexa. She is very much like DOS. If you don't know the command, she doesn't work. It has the ability to accept multiple ways to say the command, but the command must be known to work. This is why Amazon sends you emails constantly telling you about features. I still haven't figured out the correct command to control my thermostat so I just disabled the Alexa control and use my phone.

Google on the other hand... Their assistant is a Google search and as such does a far better job of handling any random query based on their vast knowledge of what people are asking for. It's much more general purpose.

wire tap on sexy time

[Anonymous Coward]

I received one of these messages just a week ago. Alexa sent me a message of my friend and his girlfriend having a private moment. I immediately texted him to ask if he intended to do that and he did not- so weird.

I'd like to say I feel bad ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to say I feel bad about this, but I'm afraid I can't.

You brought this thing into your home, in the case of this lady apparently a bunch of them. You chose to have microphones scattered around your home, you chose to connect them to the internet.

I'm over feeling sorry for people who buy this shit and then discover it's spying on them.

Boo fucking you. If you want sympathy, go someplace else.

Yet another reason why I will never own this kind of shit, or any of the IoT garbage being peddled to us.

Getting people to care

[Bradmont]

I've been thinking for a while that this is the kind of thing that needs to happen more to get people to actually care about their privacy. Maybe a timed worm that'll gradually install itself on all sorts of these devices, and all at once start sharing recorded conversations with strangers. Or a smartphone virus that randomly takes pictures of people while they're facebooking on the toilet and posts them.

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?

[spire3661]

I have root on my phone and computers......They answer only to me. I tire of this incredibly poor argument. You are small minded and purposefully pushing a terrible narrative. Slink back to the hole from whence you came.

Re:What about everything else with a microphone?

[ichimunki]

With Alexa, at least, the risks seem obvious. Whereas with things like laptops and smartphones with built-in mics and cameras and GPS, our expectation is that it is NOT paying attention when we are not actively using the device.

For my part, I know damn well that Alexa is just a device driven by software written by mere mortals, and I'm fine with the potential issues that that raises. What's really needed here is not an expectation of perfection, but some way to default the device to not do certain things until they've been opted into. Or to easily opt-out of certain functionality that I know I'm not going to use.

I mean, yes, I'm concerned about Alexa... but not more than I'm concerned that my home is insecure because a locksmith could open my front door in minutes or a kid with a hammer could come in through the windows without a second thought.

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.

Re:What about everything else with a microphone?

[scdeimos]

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*.

Amazon Alexa and Google Home are an open invitation to hackers and TLAs, though, with the ability for third parties to add Skills and Actions respectively.

You'd think with all the well publicized vulnerabilities, exploits and breaches over the last couple of decades with all kinds of internet-connected devices people would be smart enough to never, ever being Alexa- and Home-like devices into their homes. Clearly, though, people are just all kinds of stupid.

Break out the popcorn, folks. The news is just around the corner about all the Skills/Actions exploits doing the rounds that Amazon/Google will never be able to keep up with.

Um, yeah

[cascadingstylesheet]

My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying,"

Um, yeah ... that's how they know you said commands and stuff. They listen to what you are saying.

"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.

This was to be expected...

[bev_tech_rob]

Bring on the Twitter and Slashdot rage storm! (pffft)...

And how were these audio files received?

[mkettler]

Part of me wonders what really happened here...

An Alexa device can make phone calls if set up for it, and they apparently had this person's phone number imported into their Alexa contacts, so they clearly had that feature configured.

So was this just a case of Alexa making a phone call, without "Daielle" being aware of it? If the call was to a google voice number or similar service, it would just recorded the unanswered call and emailed them. This case would be just a speech activated equivalent of butt-dialing, paired with a google-voice emailed voicemail twist.

Or was this a case where Amazon generated audio files and then emailed them to some random person out of the contact list?

I kind kind of understand how the first case could happen by accident, but still be disconcerting. However, the second case would be very disconcerting.

Given that Amazon is offering to de-provision the communications feature for them, I'm inclined to think this was a "butt dialing" incident, but I'd love to hear some actual details to confirm one way or the other. Clearly the title of the news article is designed to make you think it was the second case, where Alexa recorded the call, not google voice, but there's a lot of vagueness here that makes it unclear.

Who knew a device always listening might record?

[JoeyRox]

You have to be six degrees of stupid to allow an always-listening device like Alexa into your home. I don't care how convenient or cool it is.

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.

Re:Wut

[war4peace]

Given the fact it was sent to someone from their network,. I suspect it's a not-yet-officially-implemented function which somehow got triggered. Admittedly it could be something neutral such as the ability to send a message to a contact through Alexa.

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.

"send a voice message"

[hawguy]

I assume what happened was they triggered the "send a voice message" function in their conversation and their Echo device's volume was turned down and didn't hear the Echo activation beep or see the light. Based on this guide, all you have to do is say something that sounds like "Alexa send a voice message to XXX" and if XXX is a unique contact id, then the Echo sends it without further confirmation.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help...

To send a voice message using a supported Echo device

        1 - Say, "Send a message to [contact name]."
        2 - If the name is similar to other contacts in your address book, Alexa repeats the name back for you to confirm.
        3 - Once you confirm the name, Alexa prompts you for the message.
        4- When you've finished talking, Alexa sends your voice message.

Re:"send a voice message"

[110010001000]

It is more likely that the guy who received it had a phone number very close to the one the NSA uses.

Re:"send a voice message"

[will_die]

The other option is that they had the alexa app and butt actived that.
Frankly I don't put much into what that amazon "engineer"(is that a title amazon uses for customer support) said, it sounds like something you would say just to make the customer happy, instead of saying "hey idiots you activated the capability yourself, here is what you did"

Dave, I've noticed...

[goombah99]

Dave, I've noticed your bowel movements are growing in time, so I told the google telephone assistant AI schedule a visit to your doctor.

Dave, I've noticed your shower runs for more than 5 minutes, and that's a waste of water. I posted this shameful habit to your Baidu page and lowered your Beijing social credit score.

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.

Ship has sailed.

[SeattleLawGuy]

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.

That ship has sailed. Phones are ubiquitous, any VOIP phones you have are on your network, and many computers and monitors and other devices have built-in microphones. Most conversations in the developed world happen in the presence of a microphone, and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Re:Consider how this is possible

[Obfuscant]

Consider what is required to make this "rare" incident possible: - Alexa must continually record audio, and upload these recordings.

Wrong. All it requires is someone saying something that sounds like "Alexa" and the recording turns on. It doesn't have to be "continually".

- Alexa has access to your contacts list.

Yes. It will, if you've given it access.

- Alexa is able to send email, including attachments.

It probably can, but in this instance it was something sent to a phone. TFA is so devoid of technical details, and it is third party info, so it is entirely possible that the "audio files" that were "sent to a phone" are voicemail messages. Like butt-dialing but using Alexa.

How many people have any idea that Alexa has these capabilities?

Out of the group of people that have connected their contact list with Alexa so it can send messages to people on that list, probably ALL OF THEM.

Ok, ok, most people wouldn't care if they did know. I'll go cry in a corner now.

You really shouldn't allow other people so much control over your emotional state. Why do you care so much that some people value the convenience of an Alexa over the strict "tell nobody nothing" privacy restrictions you put on yourself?

Re:Wut

[JesseMcDonald]

Admittedly it could be something neutral such as the ability to send a message to a contact through Alexa.

This is the most likely explanation by far, IMHO. The device mistook something they said as the activation word, interpreted random audio as a command to send a message to one of their contacts, and then proceeded to record whatever followed as the message. Nothing too far-fetched or nefarious—just the well-known imprecision of voice recognition software in a device designed with the ability to record and send voice messages. One might argue that it was inevitable that this would happen to someone eventually.

Just a voice-activated version of a butt dial.

[MDMurphy]

An update on Ars Technica has details: https://arstechnica.com/gadget...

In short: A string of words in a voice conversation was interpreted to be "send a voice message", which it did. Probably the best fix: Make sure the Echo's voice responses through the several steps needed to accomplish this cannot be muted and are played at a volume level louder than the ambient noise in the room.

This makes the whole thing the equivalent of a butt dial to voicemail circa 1997. Sit on your non-flip phone and either speed dial someone or re-dial a previous number. The call goes to VM and if you're talking the whole time someone gets a 30-minute "file" of someone talking and not knowing they are being recorded.

Re:Just a voice-activated version of a butt dial.

[Ol Olsoc]

Probably the best fix:

Don't buy one. If we don't call this surveillance, we don't call anything surveillance. Then again - if you want a little device that might be programmed to send what you are saying to various places, have at it