‘Alexa, what do you know about us?’ What I discovered when I asked Amazon to tell me everything my family’s smart speaker had heard
‘Alexa, what do you know about us?’ What I discovered when I asked Amazon to tell me everything my family’s smart speaker had heard
For years, Alexa has been our on-call vet, DJ, teacher, parent, therapist and whipping boy. What secrets would the data reveal?
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The most concerning part about this article is that they put one in their nine-year-old's bedroom.
Based on the article, it lets her ask them things that she doesn't want to ask her parents, though I'm not sure that if I were 9 years old that I'd suddenly want to discover that my parents have a list of everything I've asked it and are reading through it, much less that Amazon has a database.
Yeah, that is a terrible violation of trust. A parent should stop listening when they find out that they have a copy of such conversations of their child. They shouldn't write a newspaper article with citations about it
A parent shouldn't be letting their single digit aged child have unsupervised access to the Internet. Agreed that they shouldn't be publicizing it, but this idea that parents should be letting their kids have secrets when they're so little is one way dangerous adults take advantage of kids.
Yeah, that's a terrible idea.
This seems like a bad idea, to me
Why?
Edit: No one answers the question yet downvotes me for asking a simple question that wasn’t clearly answered in the article. That article really didn’t say anything outside of Amazon documents every prompt ever.
Because they have no idea why not to. Despite having written the article explaining that clearly.
Must have missed the part where the article explained anything clearly other than Amazon documents all your prompts.
That’s not enough?
That it’s listening and remembering when I talk to it? That’s not exactly spying on us.
A couple of days later, I received an email containing links to gigabytes of information: particulars of every purchase I’ve ever made – from the noir novel I bought on the day that Amazon UK launched to the 28th pair of headphones acquired in as many years. Records of every page turn of every Kindle ebook I’ve opened, every moment of Prime content I’ve watched, measured by the second. And, of course, the details of every interaction we have ever had with our Echo; every question asked, every song requested, every timer set.
They don’t make it easy to find gold among the fields of data available for download.
That’s exactly what it is.
It gave him back every piece of data he had put into Amazon which was tied to a log in. Where is the spying? He willing did this and the whole piece felt like an observation more than a worry. Just my perception that though.
"it gave him back every piece of data"
Back from where? Back from Amazon where it lives, after being collected from the writer's house. Where it is regularly used for algorithmic massage to better pluck dollars off of them and further direct their media habits.
Honestly, this is not hard.
Was there any indication that it was listening outside of being prompted? That’s just an assumption and would be no different than the phone we all have in our pockets most of the day.
To add to the other responses, and I suspect the real reason, is that Coco is listening to Audible Audio books regularly and/or music. It's mentioned and then dropped by the article fairly quickly.
Interesting how every comment on the article is doing the "you're a terrible parent, how could you do that" routine when I'll bet it's there because Coco either took the first one in or asked for a second one. Kid wants, kid normally gets one way or another.
Also, surely this device is no different to a phone in that neither is meant to be listening indiscriminately. There's a chance a 9 year old has a phone nowadays I'd imagine
They work great as an intercom, if you have them in every. Room
Yeah, an intercom between you, your kids, and Amazon.
Alexa, why does daddy yell and hit mommy?