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Amazon Explains Why Alexa Recorded And Emailed A Private Conversation (mercurynews.com)
Amazon has issued the following statement about why their Alexa device recorded a woman's private conversation and then emailed it to one of her friends:
Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like "Alexa." Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a "send message" request. At which point, Alexa said out loud "To whom?" At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, "[contact name], right?" Alexa then interpreted background conversation as "right." As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.
This apparently didn't satisfy the woman whose conversation was recorded, according to the Mercury News:
Now her family has unplugged all the devices, and although Amazon offered to "de-provision" the devices of their communications features so they could keep using them to control their home, Danielle and her family reportedly want a refund instead.
When reached Friday, an Amazon spokeswoman would not comment about whether the company will issue a refund.
Other smart home speakers carry similar privacy risks. Last year, for example, Google had to release a patch for its Home Mini speakers after some of them were found to be recording everything.
This apparently didn't satisfy the woman whose conversation was recorded, according to the Mercury News:
Now her family has unplugged all the devices, and although Amazon offered to "de-provision" the devices of their communications features so they could keep using them to control their home, Danielle and her family reportedly want a refund instead.
When reached Friday, an Amazon spokeswoman would not comment about whether the company will issue a refund.
Other smart home speakers carry similar privacy risks. Last year, for example, Google had to release a patch for its Home Mini speakers after some of them were found to be recording everything.
I saw this scenario coming a mile away. When you use a constant listening device that can execute actions on your behalf with very poor AI then this will happen. Until the AI can rival human intelligence then this device can not be relied upon.
Alexa: "To confirm you'd like to send this message repeat 5... 6... 8"
User: "5... 6... 8"
There. Pick 3 random positive integers for the send code each time.
That AC is either stupid, in full-on panic mode (causing stupidity) or trying to spread propaganda (i.e. lying). While attacks by apps against careless users are easy, it is a whole different story to attack a carefully managed phone. And no, the FBI does not have that capability. Maybe the NSA has in some cases, but if so, they are very careful to protect it, which means it does not get used a lot. Also note that this is pretty easy to detect for a competent expert, as the data exfiltration will show up in various ways.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.