Amazon's Alexa Recorded a Woman's Private Conversation and Sent it to a Contact

[2010mini]

since this is the only time I have heard of anything like this, I will assume this is either an anomaly or an instance of the woman not hearing the confirmation from alexa. The idea that this is indicative of amazon's intention to eavesdrop on consumers seems like it would need to meet a pretty high bar of proof.

My Alexa activates when we are all in the room having a normal conversation. Even when no one mentions the word “Alexa” or anything close to it. It just turns on, freaking everyone out, and starts saying random stuff.

Siri has never done that. And I doubt Google’s assistant would either.
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I don't trust having these things in my home, always listening mics.. just feels invasive.

Funny thing.... I hear this stuff all the time. But yet those same people post all their info on social media.... and I’m like... what’s the difference?

 

[Seanm87]

You guys are aware iPhones are always listening as well right? Say hey Siri (unless you turned it off)

 

[recoil80]

This is one of the reasons why I still have no idea why people put these devices in their homes voluntarily. HomePod included.

If you don't trust the companies behind Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and Bixby you should be concerned about your smartphone too. It follows you everywhere you go, so it is even more dangerous than a device like HomePod

 

[Shirasaki]

I am so glad i grew up half in the analog world & half in the digital world. Although I embrace technology, I have a healthy distrust of it too. I would never buy an Alexa. I don’t even use SIRI. Talking to my electronic devices just seems weird to me.

Same for me. I turn off Siri through restriction so that I won’t see any trace of her anywhere I usually access.
Not many people question the implication in the movie “I, robot”. But I take it seriously. What would happen when one day that comes? No one knows.

 

[Quu]

Funny thing.... I hear this stuff all the time. But yet those same people post all their info on social media.... and I’m like... what’s the difference?

Personally I don't. I don't have Facebook, never have. Feels invasive just like this Mic listening thing. I post on this forum but I don't post personal information on here.

 

[iapplelove]

Speak for yourself I did have privacy, back in the 80’s to very early 1990 - the net was called BBS
!

Oh I remember the old bulletin boards lol, and I am speaking for myself.

Do you really think things were private back then too? Really? Besides that was just an archaic style messaging system which became a precursor for aol chat really.

Not much personal info being passed around back then.

 

[raybo]

It's only the future if you buy one...

Or you are in a place where someone else bought one...

 

[TonnyM]

Apple approach pays off, those things will happen more and more often.

 

[iapplelove]

Some of us always knew, others pretended they didn't. The whole big data/machine learning/social network thing is a scam, it hardly improves our lives unless we are so corrupted that we feel right when the machine thinks you are your social friends and you must think and behave like the majority does. It would never work for me. The industry is spending trillions in research, development and marketing in order to force spybots on you without giving you an alternative (helps the governments too) instead of e.g. promoting solutions .

I know "some of us" like to think we knew all along, but we didn't. No one here would have bought a smart phone back in the day if they truly knew.

But I totally agree on the social media comment. I never had a FB, never had a twitter account either. When friends were opening myspace profiles I thought it was dumb. I didn't want people knowing everything I did. But we know now the snooping is much much worse.

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

While this is indeed troubling, given that there is no such thing as bug-free software this type of side effect is going to happen. Once it does, a family/home risk analysis is in order. Can you live with the occasional random bug? If so, don't stress. If not, unplug. The real concern is how... and how quickly... Amazon responds. Fortunately because of their software model those fixes are automatically applied as soon as possible.

For me (YMMV) I can live with this. I don't, however, connect Alexa to anything financial or to my home security system. Lights, Devices, and Music are my staples.

It’s people like you that are going to roll over, adapt and say this is “normal”. You’re the kind of people they want.
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Not too surprised, I have several Echo Dots and they can get triggered easily at times.

One reason why I didn't link my phone to it outside of using the Alexa app.

These things can be handy, but you still need to be careful.

Those dots sound just like a snowflake! Haha

 

[garylapointe]

From reading the story it seems like it recorded the couple's conversation about the floors, but the subject line and the article just keep saying "woman" over and over???

 

[MacBH928]

I think the general public do not understand how internet connected devices work, they trust big name companies too much. I don't think they realize anything connected to the internet is hackable that includes voice recording and media capturing devices in your homes. Not to mention webcams and smartphones in your pockets.

It really is time for people to back off from the internet, and disconnect their lives. We should go back to using the internet like back in the 90s, when we used a computer to access "the web", and once we were done we were done. It shouldn't suggest possible GFs matches from me based on my text conversations on social media or how many times I use the toilet and send it to Google for analysis to tell me if I might have health issue or not..

 

[kdarling]

From reading the story it seems like it recorded the couple's conversation about the floors, but the subject line and the article just keep saying "woman" over and over???

Because these stories are trying to be frightening.

What I want to know is:

- How come they didn't notice the swirling blue light? Was it behind them, on a shelf, or what?

- Exactly what words were used that confused it.

- What skill was used, how did it send (email?), and how much.

- Did the skill say anything afterwards, like "Okay, sent Tom your message."

Again, these things are gonna happen. Heck, I can't count the number of times I've been butt dialed and treated to someone's conversation without them meaning to
[doublepost=1527251659][/doublepost]Okay, just read more info about the sequence of events on CNN from Amazon:

"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.'

Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request," Amazon said in a statement.

"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."

--

So, TWICE the Echo asked for more info and confirmation, while lit up to show it was active.

 

[76morgan]

since this is the only time I have heard of anything like this, I will assume this is either an anomaly or an instance of the woman not hearing the confirmation from alexa. The idea that this is indicative of amazon's intention to eavesdrop on consumers seems like it would need to meet a pretty high bar of proof.

I read this same article on some other site and they included what Amazon’s results were after their investigation into the recorded conversation. The Echo device had heard the call word or something close to “Alexa” and a command to send, Alexa then asked who to send the recording to and heard the people say a name in their contacts (or something similar to the name), she then asked to confirm and heard a “yes”. So the whole thing was a freak misunderstanding and there was nothing malicious behind it. It does bring up issues of any of these devices in our homes and the fact that none of them can let you change the wake word to your own choice of name.
The sound “Alexa” comes up surprisingly often in our home in conversations and triggers her constantly. I go through the app and listen to what triggered her and it’s interesting to hear what the echo misheard and it always sounds exactly like “Alexa”. I don’t give it access to my contacts, so I’m not too worried about sending a private conversation to anyone.
The upside is that echo can clearly listens for the wake word and can do what it’s instended to do. I’ve mostly given up on Siri because it’s either like trying to summon someone very hard of hearing or summoning several people with the same name in the same room.

 

[JRobinsonJr]

It’s people like you that are going to roll over, adapt and say this is “normal”. You’re the kind of people they want.
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Those dots sound just like a snowflake! Haha

Wow. Think highly of yourself? How about coming back with facts and logic.

 

[DoctorTech]

I've used my FingBox (an outstanding, easy to use network monitoring device that attaches to your router) to monitor my Amazon Echos. There is some data sent back and forth between the devices and the cloud even when the wake word "Alexa" has not been used but it is very minimal (~1Kb per device about every 10-15 minutes). I can't actually see what the data is that is going back and forth but it is nowhere near enough to be streaming audio. When I say the wake word, I can immediately see the spike in network activity from the activated device as the Echo begins to stream audio back to the cloud for deciphering what a person is saying.

I am very privacy minded but I do not believe Amazon is intentionally "spying" or collecting data on customers.

 

[citysnaps]

According to non-hysterical stories, it attempted to guess what a command was.

Probably the woman said something to her husband like, "Alex says we should call Tom and ask him about our floors". And the Echo interpreted it as, "Alexa call Tom" and recorded a message to send.

The dumbest headlines out there are ones like "Alexa spied on a woman and sent her conversation to a random contact!"

WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOT REPORTERS

In this case, the computer was neither "spying" (seriously, kiddies??) nor sending to someone random. It obviously THOUGHT it was told to record and send to a known contact, because of a reportedly rare combination of words and actions.

I see this as one of the expected teething problems of smart assistants. Shoot, even human beings quite often accidentally misinterpret what they're told to do.

I do think that some people need to be able to program in a much longer wakeup word than Alexa or Computer. Or maybe they should just turn off the mike and use the button on top to enable command executions.

"Probably"

Yes, it's fun to wildly speculate. And then go with a narrative that conforms to your already held beliefs.

 

[MistrSynistr]

Just so you know, all of you were warned about this, Wikileaks released it, you didn't believe, now you're getting first hand intel.

What will it take?
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Amazon admitted that it happens from time to time. "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."

Oh ok cool. Nothing to see here.

 

[Boatboy24]

Say what you want about Apple but Siri will never do such thing....she wouldn't recognize the command in the first place

I'm not so sure. My aunt told me a story last weekend of when she was reading a passage from a book to my uncle recently that contained the 'n' word. Her iPhone told her she shouldn't use that word. Now, I wasn't there to witness it myself, but she is not the kind of person to make things up. The only thing I can think of is that some word(s) she said prior to that would have sounded similar to "Hey Siri" and that woke her up.

 

[kdarling]

"Probably"

Yes, it's fun to wildly speculate. And then go with a narrative that conforms to your already held beliefs.

It's even more fun to speculate when you have decades of computer experience.

And sure enough, it turns out I was pretty close. It did wake up, it did hear a name to message. It even asked for and heard a confirmation, but I didn't guess that.

In any case, it was not secretly doing anything on its own.

 

[BeefCake 15]

I know you think that you are knocking Siri, but in fact you're paying "her" a compliment. Any voice interpretation software is going to have a range of error. Some apps will be overly conservative about interpreting what is said; some may be over-aggressive. It seems pretty clear that for a home application, being conservative--"sorry, I don't understand that"-- is FAR better than being over-aggressive-- making a guess and taking action based on that guess.

I think the issue is the lack of commands built in rather than the passive/aggressive level of translation.
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I'm not so sure. My aunt told me a story last weekend of when she was reading a passage from a book to my uncle recently that contained the 'n' word. Her iPhone told her she shouldn't use that word. Now, I wasn't there to witness it myself, but she is not the kind of person to make things up. The only thing I can think of is that some word(s) she said prior to that would have sounded similar to "Hey Siri" and that woke her up.

Yes I've had my phone go off, although extremely rare, when I say something that may have sounded like Siri. Yes Siri will scold you for saying the N word, just tested as you got me curious lol

 

[2010mini]

Personally I don't. I don't have Facebook, never have. Feels invasive just like this Mic listening thing. I post on this forum but I don't post personal information on here.

Good for you. But it seems a lot of people complain about invasive govt snooping. But yet post their entire life online. At that point the government doesn’t need to snoop.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I would rather live in the mountains with Grizzly Adams than be under constant surveillance within my own home. Today it's Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple's Homepod, tommorrow it's telescreens. Big Brother is watching you.

Well you assume the mountains will not be under surveillance. You know, satellites, decoy owls, that squirrel that looks a bit too squirrelly like its up to no good and not the digging holes in your yard no good. Really, resistance is futile just like finding a new car on the lot these days with a manual transmission. Heh.

 

[RogerWilco]

Silicon snake oil, sold by the gallon, to willing "consumers" who collectively power the world's "modern" economies. Makes all kinds of sense, sure it does.

 

[travelsheep]

"hardwood floors" press friendly version of "hard wood" problems?