Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Good luck arguing the context to explain yourself. If not now, soon.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Thousands of Amazon Employees Listen to Alexa Requests for Improvement Purposes [Updated]
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I’ll gladly spend an extra 5 seconds of my life typing on a keyboard to find something online before I hand over my personal info to a billion dollar corporation.
Let's not try to justify Siri suckiness on privacy policy, Siri is horrible because Apple was blinded by uts own ego, they thought they can get away with mediocre products while other AIs took over
What is this world coming to. I would never want a product that “listens” to me in home unless it cooked, cleaned, ran errands, and brought about world peace lol. Then maybe.
What a shocker! Stop the press. Services/apps/devices spy on users.
If a person thinks about privacy seriously then services like Siri or Alexa or whatever-Cloud are out of the picture permanently. Never using a camera, block it.
Moving back to the - by now - ancient history of '90s computing you could easily scan, intercept, accumulate and analyze any signal coming from phone, camera, computer then. Look no further than what folks like Mitnick or Shimomura did. If anything things got immeasurably worse today with every electronic device being basically personal broadcast tower. There was security symposium not so long ago in Japan where camera on-line streams by unaware users were demonstrated. 90% of users don't even know they broadcasting to the World with phones, watches, fridges, cars or these on-line connected vacuum cleaners.
If a person thinks about privacy seriously then services like Siri or Alexa or whatever-Cloud are out of the picture permanently. Never using a camera, block it.
Moving back to the - by now - ancient history of '90s computing you could easily scan, intercept, accumulate and analyze any signal coming from phone, camera, computer then. Look no further than what folks like Mitnick or Shimomura did. If anything things got immeasurably worse today with every electronic device being basically personal broadcast tower. There was security symposium not so long ago in Japan where camera on-line streams by unaware users were demonstrated. 90% of users don't even know they broadcasting to the World with phones, watches, fridges, cars or these on-line connected vacuum cleaners.
My guess is the requests that confuse alexia are the ones that get analyzed, to see why she didn’t know the answer.
You don't want a "product that “listens” to me" what do you think the iPhone does with always on "Hey Siri"; Apple is listening to you.
Detecting the keyword(s) is not an exact thing, all Systems most likely have false positives and false negatives leading to unwanted recording or no reaction of the Assistant.
Wow. People are really jumping to conclusions.
All that the article says is that Google, Amazon and Apple collect data and let their staff listen to it to make improvements.
Amazon is the worst at masking information, followed by Apple and Google is the best. How Amazon handles sensitive, yet practically anonymous recordings might be questionable, but article doesn't say anything about how the other two handle it.
This is also not why Google Assistant and Alexa is better than Siri. It is just down to less data, a result of selling less devices, to fewer people with less use cases (and maybe worse algorithms).
All that the article says is that Google, Amazon and Apple collect data and let their staff listen to it to make improvements.
Amazon is the worst at masking information, followed by Apple and Google is the best. How Amazon handles sensitive, yet practically anonymous recordings might be questionable, but article doesn't say anything about how the other two handle it.
This is also not why Google Assistant and Alexa is better than Siri. It is just down to less data, a result of selling less devices, to fewer people with less use cases (and maybe worse algorithms).
You missed Apple out on that one, Apple listens to siri requests.
[doublepost=1555059808][/doublepost]
They are not listening in, they are listening to requests you make to the device.
Listening in implies recording what is going on in the background and sending that data.
[doublepost=1555059900][/doublepost]
Apple does it too.
And you assumed that I was shocked by what was a statement of fact based on what evidence?
google is an advertising agency. i'm sorry you're shocked you were just naive; poor you
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020515/business-google.asp
In this case, Apple doesn't make most of its profit from data unlike the others. Well Google and Facebook anyway. Amazon sells stuff too.
Also there is some (not a lot) empircal evidence that data is less secure in some cases, Facebook has got a lot of egg on their ahem "Face" lately because of data leaks and sharing. Companies founded on the principle of data gathering, even if they are run securely in an honest way are going to inherently be a more interesting target for hackers/spies etc.
There was the test that showed for example Android phones share much more data with Google than iPhones with Apple. Maybe one could be ok with that, and it certainly is part of the reason most consider Google (or Alexa) better than Siri.
We are still in a transition with how big data is shaping our society for good and ill. Yes I said and.
I just moved in to a new apartment, and I seemed to have misplaced my microwave. My brother sent me an amazon.com gift card and I used that to buy a microwave, Amazon Basics. It was cheap, and it said it worked with Alexa. I guess now I'll have to get me a girlfriend named Alexa who will microwave my food for me.
You made an assumption, perhaps they (lower rung employees) don't have the id's of the people in question but they wanted to send it up the flag pole to the people who can match it up and that is when they were told to leave it alone.
Anyway a couple of points brought up by the article, they wrote that in some cases the Alexa device was recording without hearing a trigger word, do these mistakes happen with Siri/Cortana/Google, if you have the Apple TV but turn off Siri completely or you have the Fire device but turn off Alexa completely, presumably there is little to no chance of any accidental recordings, correct?
Secondly in one of the reports it came out that either Apple or Google obscured the voices of the recordings when humans listened so at least they could not create a voice print linked to a person's id, to the extent we believe all of the reports that should be a standard practice.
Also I don't like giving out extra information to any of these companies and I always try to limit information sharing but if you think about all of the times we have to speak into our phones for our credit cards/banks/cable subscriptions etc., our voiceprint is potentially floating all over the place and can possibly be exploited.
Unless you answer all of those Yes/No queries with an altered voice or use one of those voice altering devices. I don't think we should give up our data willingly but some of these conspiracy theories are just that, theories, people write and talk about so much nonsense with zero actual evidence. Just because your brain conceives it, does not mean it is actually happening.
The driving force for these companies is money, money, money, they are corporations, they are using or exploiting our information to make more money, this is not rocket science and not some dystopian sci-fi novel or A. Jones freak out.
I know it’s stored in the Secure Enclave. What I meant was that it’s stored in encrypted form and even if someone managed to hack into the Secure Enclave, they wouldn’t have my fingerprint or face info. Just a bunch of 1 and 0 that is useless to them since they won’t have the accompanying security key.
As opposed to some companies who actually stored them as jpg files unsecured on their smartphones. Can you imagine?
Oh I can imagine. LOL! Sorry for the mix up. I must have read your post wrong.
Don’t sweat it. I reread my post and I can see how it might have been a bit vague.
You already do even when you take the extra five seconds to type it in your phone. Privacy doesn't exist.
[doublepost=1555123773][/doublepost]
Every device and many apps have opt in/out of data analytics, that choice prevents apps from sending anonymous data like crash reports, app usage, and app performance data to Apple, Google, or app devs. It has nothing to do with voice assistants. It's "supposed" also keep apps and services from building a personalized profile about you to tailor ads you may want to see, it doesn't mean you won't get ads though, they'll be random vs ones that may be helpful to you. Even though you may opt out on iPhone there are still other apps you'll need to opt out of. People need to really understand and iPhone doesn't protect your privacy at all, Apple may not keep your data but the 100's of apps people have on their phone does.
It is ironic that apple talks alot about privacy but then they ask you to allow sending/sharing/transmitting your healthcare and other data to 3rd party companies as if improving the service and privacy. So, apparently you cannot take a part of apples improving programs without sharing your data with 3rd party companies.
And wants everything they say or do to stay private they should live in the woods, alone. It's the only way.