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I don't understand why anyone would want to have such a device in their home. How long before they start data mining conversations for better ad targeting? What

I don't understand why anyone would want to have such a device in their home. How long before they start data mining conversations for better ad targeting? What if a state actor gets access to such devices? Is no one worried at all?

IgorPartola 10y ago
I have an Echo. It's great. To me the Amazon play for this is very straightforward: they want you buying Amazon stuff using it. They don't sell ads, they sell products. When they say that the device only listens for its own name locally, I believe it (sans someone hacking it to spy on people of course, but I don't believe that Amazon deliberately programmed it to do this). Google is a different story. I imagine that they would try to sell a device that listens 100% of the time and targets ads at you based on what you talk about. Google makes money by selling ads, not by making buying stuff convenient. Their incentive is different. Ideally, I'd love for Apple to create such a device, but it won't be open, would cost an arm and a leg, and would probably use Siri, which lags behind the Echo in what it can do by quite a bit now.
- westernmostcoy 10y ago
  Amazon does sell ads, actually. A quick search would have shown you this[0], and they show up for Kindle users, on www.amazon.com, and elsewhere. It is highly likely Echo will be involved at some point. I think the rest of your post is conjecture, but does this change your opinion? Amazon is a diverse business that wants to sell many things, including your eyeballs (or ears in the case of Echo) to others via advertising. [0]: https://advertising.amazon.com/ https://advertising.amazon.com/
  - IgorPartola 10y ago
    First off, this is all my opinion, not absolute truth. Second, sure Amazon does ads on the side, but the majority of their money is made by selling their own products. Occam's Razor suggests that they simply want to sell you stuff using one more way. Notice that the Echo didn't do almost anything when it was initially released, except allowing you to buy stuff. That was the part that they worked out before launching it. Also, don't forget that Amazon also has a number of other devices that are very similar: the Dash button and Amazon Fresh come to mind. The Echo fits nicely in line with it. I am not saying they couldn't use it for something nefarious: they could definitely abuse it. I just think that they have less incentive to do so than Google.
berberous 10y ago
Sure, some people are worried. But these devices only listen when they hear the wake word ("Ok Google" or "Alexa"), so there's no real concern about the companies listening to anything other than your queries. And 99% of people are not interesting enough for a state actor to care about. If you are a spy, criminal, politician, etc., then I'd agree you should think twice about owning one.
- cwyers 10y ago
  > But these devices only listen when they hear the wake word ("Ok Google" or "Alexa") It's not like there's a law of physics requiring that always be true, you're trusting that to: A) Be true now, and B) Keep being true in the future. And it's the sort of claim that is very very easy to lie about.
  - jon-wood 10y ago
    It's not that easy to lie about - if it's sending everything you say then it'll be sending data over the network as well.
    - drdoom 10y ago
      What? They can't wait to send it over later when you actually do use it?
  - berberous 10y ago
    Google and Amazon are huge companies and would face serious liability for falsely advertising that their devices only listened upon hearing the wake word. Moreover, I'm sure someone out there would analyze the network traffic and figure out it did not work as claimed. They have nothing to gain by secretly transmitting data, and everything to lose. State adversaries are a different story. I don't doubt the NSA might somehow break into Snowden's Echo, but most people don't have such adversaries.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
cwyers 10y ago
I've seen the ads my Kindle Paperwhite displays as a screensaver, and... no, I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting.
- kbenson 10y ago
  No kidding. And my fiance was under the impression for a while that it was the cover of what I was reading at the time... She was probably somewhat concerned.
- joeld42 10y ago
  That might be more the fault of the advertisers than Amazon. Amazon knows what books you will like with a high degree of certainty, but they don't always have ads available that are a close match, and some advertisers set their targeting very broadly because they don't care (they want a wide reach, e.g. for rank boosting) or don't know better.
  - cwyers 10y ago
    You're probably not too far off (although nowhere else in Amazon's ecosystem have I seen very good recommendations, and most of their advertising elsewhere seems to be just showing me stuff I browsed on Amazon earlier and didn't buy), but if the ad inventory isn't there to really incentivize that sort of targeting, that's the same thing, isn't it?
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting." I get that better ad targeting may not seem like much of an issue at first thought, and may even seem like a benefit, but I'd suggest that the perceived benefits may start to unravel if you consider it from a different point of view. Companies that are involved in delivering targeted advertising are basing what ads to show you on the profile they're building up about you and what they perceive as similar people to you. The idea being to give you more of what they think you'll like. What this leads to is a filter bubble. When you're in a filter bubble (and I'd argue most of us are), the culture you're exposed to is increasingly limited by your past likes and dislikes, increasingly tailored based on market demographics, far less likely to broaden your range of experience. We shouldn't welcome the filter bubble, we should act to break out of it, and resisting the mechanisms behind targeted ads is one such way of doing so.
wstrange 10y ago
Ultimately it comes down to a question if you trust Google or not. I do, but I know that sentiment is not widely shared on HN. Enabling state spying would destroy people's trust, and hence their business. I think Google is highly motivated to keep your data private.
- anf 10y ago
  There's enabling state spying and then there's doing so knowingly and then there's doing so provably knowingly. Which do you trust? Do you think devices like this have no remote vulnerabilities, that nation states don't have the resources to find and exploit them, or that they can but don't?
ZoeZoeBee 10y ago
Yesterday on CNBC Jason Calacanis in response to the question. Question: "Jason you don't worry about the data Alexa is collecting on you and your conversations that you're having unwittingly around this device? Answer: "Your privacy is an Illusion, uhh it's been gone for many years, the NSA is listening to any coversation it wants to through your phone already. So the idea that we have any privacy at this point is sort of laughable... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9fnY5rIjb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9fnY5rIjb4 In case you are wondering he's bullish on the Echo and Amazon
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I want the device very much. But definitely not one that sends my voice to the cloud. Not one I can't tweak at all.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
We're basically all worried, but currently, we at least have the option of not buying the damned thing.

IgorPartola 10y ago

I have an Echo. It's great. To me the Amazon play for this is very straightforward: they want you buying Amazon stuff using it. They don't sell ads, they sell products. When they say that the device only listens for its own name locally, I believe it (sans someone hacking it to spy on people of course, but I don't believe that Amazon deliberately programmed it to do this). Google is a different story. I imagine that they would try to sell a device that listens 100% of the time and targets ads at you based on what you talk about. Google makes money by selling ads, not by making buying stuff convenient. Their incentive is different. Ideally, I'd love for Apple to create such a device, but it won't be open, would cost an arm and a leg, and would probably use Siri, which lags behind the Echo in what it can do by quite a bit now.

westernmostcoy 10y ago
Amazon does sell ads, actually. A quick search would have shown you this[0], and they show up for Kindle users, on www.amazon.com, and elsewhere. It is highly likely Echo will be involved at some point. I think the rest of your post is conjecture, but does this change your opinion? Amazon is a diverse business that wants to sell many things, including your eyeballs (or ears in the case of Echo) to others via advertising. [0]: https://advertising.amazon.com/ https://advertising.amazon.com/
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  First off, this is all my opinion, not absolute truth. Second, sure Amazon does ads on the side, but the majority of their money is made by selling their own products. Occam's Razor suggests that they simply want to sell you stuff using one more way. Notice that the Echo didn't do almost anything when it was initially released, except allowing you to buy stuff. That was the part that they worked out before launching it. Also, don't forget that Amazon also has a number of other devices that are very similar: the Dash button and Amazon Fresh come to mind. The Echo fits nicely in line with it. I am not saying they couldn't use it for something nefarious: they could definitely abuse it. I just think that they have less incentive to do so than Google.

berberous 10y ago

Sure, some people are worried. But these devices only listen when they hear the wake word ("Ok Google" or "Alexa"), so there's no real concern about the companies listening to anything other than your queries. And 99% of people are not interesting enough for a state actor to care about. If you are a spy, criminal, politician, etc., then I'd agree you should think twice about owning one.

cwyers 10y ago
> But these devices only listen when they hear the wake word ("Ok Google" or "Alexa") It's not like there's a law of physics requiring that always be true, you're trusting that to: A) Be true now, and B) Keep being true in the future. And it's the sort of claim that is very very easy to lie about.
- jon-wood 10y ago
  It's not that easy to lie about - if it's sending everything you say then it'll be sending data over the network as well.
  - drdoom 10y ago
    What? They can't wait to send it over later when you actually do use it?
- berberous 10y ago
  Google and Amazon are huge companies and would face serious liability for falsely advertising that their devices only listened upon hearing the wake word. Moreover, I'm sure someone out there would analyze the network traffic and figure out it did not work as claimed. They have nothing to gain by secretly transmitting data, and everything to lose. State adversaries are a different story. I don't doubt the NSA might somehow break into Snowden's Echo, but most people don't have such adversaries.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago

cwyers 10y ago

I've seen the ads my Kindle Paperwhite displays as a screensaver, and... no, I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting.

kbenson 10y ago
No kidding. And my fiance was under the impression for a while that it was the cover of what I was reading at the time... She was probably somewhat concerned.
joeld42 10y ago
That might be more the fault of the advertisers than Amazon. Amazon knows what books you will like with a high degree of certainty, but they don't always have ads available that are a close match, and some advertisers set their targeting very broadly because they don't care (they want a wide reach, e.g. for rank boosting) or don't know better.
- cwyers 10y ago
  You're probably not too far off (although nowhere else in Amazon's ecosystem have I seen very good recommendations, and most of their advertising elsewhere seems to be just showing me stuff I browsed on Amazon earlier and didn't buy), but if the ad inventory isn't there to really incentivize that sort of targeting, that's the same thing, isn't it?
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting." I get that better ad targeting may not seem like much of an issue at first thought, and may even seem like a benefit, but I'd suggest that the perceived benefits may start to unravel if you consider it from a different point of view. Companies that are involved in delivering targeted advertising are basing what ads to show you on the profile they're building up about you and what they perceive as similar people to you. The idea being to give you more of what they think you'll like. What this leads to is a filter bubble. When you're in a filter bubble (and I'd argue most of us are), the culture you're exposed to is increasingly limited by your past likes and dislikes, increasingly tailored based on market demographics, far less likely to broaden your range of experience. We shouldn't welcome the filter bubble, we should act to break out of it, and resisting the mechanisms behind targeted ads is one such way of doing so.

wstrange 10y ago

Ultimately it comes down to a question if you trust Google or not. I do, but I know that sentiment is not widely shared on HN. Enabling state spying would destroy people's trust, and hence their business. I think Google is highly motivated to keep your data private.

anf 10y ago
There's enabling state spying and then there's doing so knowingly and then there's doing so provably knowingly. Which do you trust? Do you think devices like this have no remote vulnerabilities, that nation states don't have the resources to find and exploit them, or that they can but don't?

ZoeZoeBee 10y ago

Yesterday on CNBC Jason Calacanis in response to the question. Question: "Jason you don't worry about the data Alexa is collecting on you and your conversations that you're having unwittingly around this device? Answer: "Your privacy is an Illusion, uhh it's been gone for many years, the NSA is listening to any coversation it wants to through your phone already. So the idea that we have any privacy at this point is sort of laughable... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9fnY5rIjb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9fnY5rIjb4 In case you are wondering he's bullish on the Echo and Amazon

TeMPOraL 10y ago

I want the device very much. But definitely not one that sends my voice to the cloud. Not one I can't tweak at all.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

We're basically all worried, but currently, we at least have the option of not buying the damned thing.