Amazon Echo records man's private life, Amazon sends it to stranger
48 replies, posted
https://gizmodo.com/the-amazon-alexa-eavesdropping-nightmare-came-true-1831231490/amp
Changed title to something more informative
Yep, the exact thing I'm paranoid about having all these smart home devices listening to you. I know there's a mute button and plenty of settings to prevent this, but still.
It seems that all these are good for is doing things in a few seconds that would otherwise take a few more seconds to do manually? With the added bonus of recording everything you do and sending it to amazon?
These home device things are almost as stupid as the amazon key thing for mailmen
This is why I leave mine unplugged. It was a nice gift, but I don't want it recording me masturbating!
I never trusted these things in the first place, the whole idea of them just seemed iffy and I knew you couldn't trust a company like amazon to be honest.
I have 5 Google Homes and you can listen to everything you've ever said to them, which TBH I don't really like but only I can see them.
"only I can see [hear?] them"
This article demonstrates otherwise at least in the case of the Echo. Unless someone impartial and really on top of their technical shit can reverse engineer the software and unequivically prove otherwise, I'd operate under the assumption that every bit of data you give these devices - Maybe not in the same exact form (ie transcripts, keywords as opposed to audio) - is recorded and accessible by someone else.
NSA wet dream
I trust Google software and security more than I trust any other company. I'm not going to shelter myself from having a smarter home because of a slim chance someone else can access my "what's the temperature outside"
Ever since I was gifted one, I constantly talk about assassinating political figures, robbing banks, and destroying the government.
That's what it isn't unplugged, that is. Waiting to see if I get a visit from a homeland security agent!
Went to a friend's house recently and asked what channel number a specific channel is and he replied "Just use the microphone on the remote" and I'm just kinda shocked on how inconvenient it is to press 2 buttons or scroll through the guide for a few seconds that a microphone is the preffered way to go about it.
IMO, I'm an avid tech enthusiast and I'm all for technology that can improve my life, but giving my personal routine and control of everything in my home to a company so they can sell me stuff more efficiently doesn't seem worth saving a few seconds to change the temp or flick a light switch
"smarter home" lmao, you've been hypnotized by their marketing department. It's a glorified piece of spyware made to make people feel like they're in a "futuristic home", nothing more.
I'm worried that there won't be any "non-smart" peripherals for some items like TVs in the near future. Then essentially every home in America will be bugged by our corporate overlords.
It'll feel like living in 1984, where you can't really be yourself because you're constantly watched. Just an endless facade.
I've been dubious of these things from the start. Perhaps in a professional environment where having a PA to take notew and make reminders would be useful but this is just a giant security breach waiting to happen if it hasn't already.
I happen to really enjoy my google home mini.
I just find it weird how people are acting like this is some brand new thing when companies have been doing this since the internet was invented. If your device has internet and/or a mic. You are being recorded by some company or government organization. If you really think smart speakers are going "to far" you might as well throw out your cell phone and every other internet connected device because they are doing the exact same thing.
One could argue that the problem is not the existence of the devices, but complacent attitudes like yours that don't care about proven privacy violations.
Like I said. It's kinda hard not to be complacent unless I throw out all my internet connect devices and stop using anything with a microphone all together. It's just kinda hypocritical that a lot of people talk shit about the smart speakers then go happily along on their day using their cell phone and their other internet connected devices. It's either all a problem or none of it is.
You're complacent too, unless you don't own a phone, which I find unlikely.
lol you go ahead and keep your head in the sand. I'll use Google to turn on my home theater for different applications and other uses around the house, the wife and I use it daily. But yeah sure, its all """hypnotizing""" LOL. You and anybody else who thinks like this are hilarious to me.
Just remember to not speak ill of Big Brother.
Are you just going to ignore the part where I said PROVEN privacy violations? I have nothing against "smart home" devices, but you ought to be a little more upset about this specific news story.
Are you forgetting about the fact that the Facebook app was, and likely still is, listening and transmitting all microphone data without asking any permission or giving any indication it was doing so? Using any Google app sends a lot of telemetry to advertisers as well. It's anonymized but it's still data.
I have no landline, no mic or camera on my computer, and when I'm home my phone is not always on me. I know my phone and PC are tracking and recording me and I hate it but at least they are just objects I sometimes use.
You really don't see why putting a speaker that's always on, always listening for commands, within range of your entire domestic life, is a different scenario? I'm not saying you shouldn't use it, that's up to you, but for so little utility it does not seem worthwhile for me.
When the GDPR came around I decided to check everything associated with my google account and found 6 years of recordings of me, my so's, old and current friends saying "okay google" and then some dumb search, aswell as recordings where the google assistant opened from mishearing background noise as the "okay google" keyphrase and had then recorded a clip of midway conversation.
I know they use it for personalization and improving their speech detection but the experience of stumbling upon that trove of data was very weird and unsettling.
This smart home tech stuff could all be really cool, and probably quite fun to use ("okay home, party time" * house automatically deploys the disco ball and line up some banging tunes *). But with the current implementations and all their security concerns I'm not really feeling it. Between peripheral providers just outright refusing to use any kind of real authentication on devices, allowing randoms to hijack them. And hub device creators siphoning off shitloads of data for ??? purposes, it's a bit hard to justify wiring my entire house up with this shit just yet.
Open source alternatives would be nice, or at least open hub devices to hook the insecure shit up to in an attempt to fix the problems with a properly auditable central hub.
Is there a single company that offers smart devices that HASN'T had a security breach?
if you really want "smart home" tech, just grab a rasberry pi and install several available open source softwares and host the damn thing yourself.
here are some example things I am personally looking at
Mycroft – Open Source Voice Assistant
https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/tools/hass/
openHAB
Node
Domoticz
no need to trust google or alexa
Like a bunch of terrorists are going to have one of these.. More like Big Data's/Advertisers' wet dream.
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