Author Topic: Alexa, play some music” isn’t the only time Amazon is listening to you.  (Read 1121 times)

Offline callmepaul

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Interesting read, this one involves Alexa, but I am pretty sure Google an others might be doing the same. A summary:

"Now that you know that your voice recordings are being sent via the internet to a centralized location, you may have assumed Amazon will need to store that data for some period of time — for example, to use its Natural Language Processing algorithms to interpret your request for a weather report (or to buy a pizza), gather that information, and then send it back to your device for it to speak the response."

"Your Alexa-enabled device sends those recordings to an Amazon data center, where they not only use natural language processing algorithms to decode your speech and complete your request, but they also store those files in a centralized database for future use."

"To put it in even simpler terms, if you own an Amazon Alexa-enabled device, Jeff Bezos could be the least creepy person listening to you right now."

I guess the same was said with emails, web browsing, etc, but the fact that the device is "listening" and recording even when you don't call it is a little bit disturbing.

link https://medium.com/swlh/alexa-play-some-music-isnt-the-only-time-amazon-is-listening-to-you-a556df19613f
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Offline callmepaul

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I find it fascinating that one needs the media to write a story for people to say OMG.

This is very old news and anyone who is surprised by it is an oxymoron. On one hand they have an alexa (or similar) enabled device which means they are living in "today's" world, but on the other hand they naively believe that it's a private device.

How do you think google can now predict and finish off the sentences you write? They are listening, watching, reading, and recording everything that is in any way connected to the www.

Personally, I'm not too concerned about bezos himself, he's got much better things to do with his time, it's the actual creeps with long hair in the windowless basements who literally listen to your most intimate conversations that scare me.
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Hi, can I merge it myself?

No, but hit the Report to moderator button, and leave them a message.(I did that already)
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Offline callmepaul

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I find it fascinating that one needs the media to write a story for people to say OMG.

This is very old news and anyone who is surprised by it is an oxymoron. On one hand they have an alexa (or similar) enabled device which means they are living in "today's" world, but on the other hand they naively believe that it's a private device.

How do you think google can now predict and finish off the sentences you write? They are listening, watching, reading, and recording everything that is in any way connected to the www.

Personally, I'm not too concerned about bezos himself, he's got much better things to do with his time, it's the actual creeps with long hair in the windowless basements who literally listen to your most intimate conversations that scare me.


I understand your point, and I share it, but at the same time I understand the indignation from people. This is not how they sell it. They don't say "speak to Alexa at any time because she is always listening and recording conversations 24 hours"
What they say is
"When you say Alexa, it will activate, listen to your request and respond"

If companies were more honest in their marketing, people would stop being horrified by news like this. And if companies can not be more honest because they would not sell a product to anyone, then we have a problem with the product, not with honesty.
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I understand your point, and I share it, but at the same time I understand the indignation from people. This is not how they sell it. They don't say "speak to Alexa at any time because she is always listening and recording conversations 24 hours"
What they say is
"When you say Alexa, it will activate, listen to your request and respond"

If companies were more honest in their marketing, people would stop being horrified by news like this. And if companies can not be more honest because they would not sell a product to anyone, then we have a problem with the product, not with honesty.
If it is not listening then how would it know when you call it?
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Offline callmepaul

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If it is not listening then how would it know when you call it?

Sure, but, why recording while you haven't call it?
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