5 ms·

Okay, first of all: >the average parent.. is technically literate enough to know the wifi password but not savvy enough to understand how the "magic" of daddy

by dTal 10y ago

Okay, first of all: >the average parent.. is technically literate enough to know the wifi password but not savvy enough to understand how the "magic" of daddy talking to the kids through the bear (and vice versa) actually works [or] that every one of those recordings... is stored as an audio file on the web. If it is not considered amazingly stupid, or at least ignorant to not understand that the magic talking bear has a computer in it, and that if the computer wants the wifi password it probably uses the internet, and that if the entire purpose of the device is to make recordings available to you over the internet... then I despair. My sympathy for people who buy these sorts of products is wearing thin. But, in this particular instance... >our tolerances are very different when kids are involved Interesting. Why? The data is much less valuable: >One little girl who sounded about the same age as my own 4-year old daughter left a message to her parents: "Hello mommy and daddy, I love you so much." Another one has her singing a short song, others have precisely the sorts of messages you'd expect a young child to share with her parents. Hardly identity thief material.

lvh 10y ago
A device connecting to your WiFi could just be talking to devices on your network, not necessarily be sending all of your data to the Internet.
- bigiain 10y ago
  Sure - they _could_, but I've got lightbulbs and power switches that "helpfully" connect to some un branded Chinese "cloud" service - without any normal-user way to even know about it never mind turn it off. I suspect some of it is so I've got the amazingly useful (nb: may not be useful at all) feature of being able to turn my lounge room lights on and off from my phone while not at home. Cynical me suspects it's also probably a pretty good way to ensure forced just-put-of-warranty failures... Pessimist-me assumes the Russians, the Chinese, Mossad, and some kid at the local hackerspace have all pwned the Chines cloud infrastructure and are using backdoor root shells on light globes subversive tshirt purchase history, and they're all cutting each other's throat price discounting as they sell it all as "business intelligence" to my car insurance company and the CBP...
  - ourmandave 10y ago
    Damn! Had to stop and double check the settings on my router firewall after reading Pessimist-You.
gavman 10y ago
> Hardly identity thief material. True, but potentially very dangerous material in other ways. It's not hard to image kidnappers piecing together stolen audio clips to create fake messages as part of a ransom attempt. Or scammers creating audio clips to scare parents and extract money. A large bank of audio clips from a child could be used against that child's family in all sorts of ways, especially if the parents don't know the clips were stolen to begin with.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Or worse, they could train a neural network to mimic the child's voice and create a fake message to send to the police alleging child abuse, with a ransom note at the end - in the child's voice.
  - nitemice 10y ago
    You don't even need it. Adobe's working on a product that allows you to make a voice say whatever you want, using 20 min worth of voice samples. [1](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/adobe-voco-photoshop-for-audio-speech-editing/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/adobe...)
    - mulmen 10y ago
      Their ability to do harm with Flash has been limited so they had to branch out. Really though this is pretty cool, when not used for nefarious purposes.
- nobodyorother 10y ago
  Of course, when somebody releases a proof of concept, it'll be called RansomBear.
  - hornbaker 10y ago
    BearBleed.
joatmon-snoo 10y ago
>> our tolerances are very different when kids are involved > > Interesting. Why? The data is much less valuable It's the why-do-I-care-about-my-privacy argument - but it's even more personal now, because it's not just you, it's your kids. There's always that extra creep factor when it comes to children.
caf 10y ago
Interesting. Why? The data is much less valuable: Because while we can make an informed decision about putting our own data into such a service, weighing up the risks and benefits, a four year old cannot - a parent is making that decision for them, and when you are making such a decision on behalf of someone else it behooves you to act more conservatively than when deciding on your own behalf.
Spooky23 10y ago
How about the kids who don't leave cutesy messages and saw disturbing or threatening things? How about the parent who sits on the thing and says something? Voice data was once safe in its obscurity... now I have a $2 app on my phone that can do decent voice transcription. It's just one more thing to worry about.
ams6110 10y ago
If it is not considered amazingly stupid, or at least ignorant to not understand that the magic talking bear has a computer in it, and that if the computer wants the wifi password it probably uses the internet, and that if the entire purpose of the device is to make recordings available to you over the internet... then I despair. I think you vastly overestimate the degree to which non-technical consumers understand computers, wifi, the internet, email, web sites, apps on their phone, and the differences and boundaries between any of those.
orless 10y ago
> Hardly identity thief material. Audio messages can be used to train a system which then will be able to mimic the voice of the child, almost indistinguishable from the original. AI of this kind will be commodity (i.e. easily accessible by criminals) pretty soon if not today.
Intermernet 10y ago
Extreme example: Someone steals the recording saying "Hello mommy and daddy, I love you so much." They then manage to contact you, reporting that they have kidnapped your children. They play you the recording to prove they are in your custody and demand an immediate ransom payout. Highly prone to error, not very likely to work, incredibly evil and likely to end up with the perpetrator in jail, but, unfortunately, the sort of thing that a desperate criminal might try, and even more unfortunately, it only needs to succeed once for someone to consider it a viable tactic. I know this is stupidly unlikely occurrence, but extrapolate it with a bit more sophistication and you can start to see why this is actually quite nasty identity theft material.
kriro 10y ago
Wouldn't you say that as a parent it is your obligation to protect the child's privacy? The threat model doesn't even matter, there will be one eventually. All data can be used and combined (now or in the future). Is it that hard to imagine a future where recordings of a child can be used to recreate the voice of the same person as an adult...hardly. I find a "where's the harm" attitude towards privacy/data collection very troubling...doubly so if you are making that decision for someone else who can't protect themselves yet. Ethically it's probably a bigger problem than having such a lax attitude about your own privacy (which if perfectly fine/freedom of choice). And yes I also rant and rave about parents who post pictures of their children everywhere.

by dTal 10y ago

lvh 10y ago

A device connecting to your WiFi could just be talking to devices on your network, not necessarily be sending all of your data to the Internet.

bigiain 10y ago
Sure - they _could_, but I've got lightbulbs and power switches that "helpfully" connect to some un branded Chinese "cloud" service - without any normal-user way to even know about it never mind turn it off. I suspect some of it is so I've got the amazingly useful (nb: may not be useful at all) feature of being able to turn my lounge room lights on and off from my phone while not at home. Cynical me suspects it's also probably a pretty good way to ensure forced just-put-of-warranty failures... Pessimist-me assumes the Russians, the Chinese, Mossad, and some kid at the local hackerspace have all pwned the Chines cloud infrastructure and are using backdoor root shells on light globes subversive tshirt purchase history, and they're all cutting each other's throat price discounting as they sell it all as "business intelligence" to my car insurance company and the CBP...
- ourmandave 10y ago
  Damn! Had to stop and double check the settings on my router firewall after reading Pessimist-You.

gavman 10y ago

> Hardly identity thief material. True, but potentially very dangerous material in other ways. It's not hard to image kidnappers piecing together stolen audio clips to create fake messages as part of a ransom attempt. Or scammers creating audio clips to scare parents and extract money. A large bank of audio clips from a child could be used against that child's family in all sorts of ways, especially if the parents don't know the clips were stolen to begin with.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Or worse, they could train a neural network to mimic the child's voice and create a fake message to send to the police alleging child abuse, with a ransom note at the end - in the child's voice.
- nitemice 10y ago
  You don't even need it. Adobe's working on a product that allows you to make a voice say whatever you want, using 20 min worth of voice samples. [1](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/adobe-voco-photoshop-for-audio-speech-editing/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/adobe...)
  - mulmen 10y ago
    Their ability to do harm with Flash has been limited so they had to branch out. Really though this is pretty cool, when not used for nefarious purposes.
nobodyorother 10y ago
Of course, when somebody releases a proof of concept, it'll be called RansomBear.
- hornbaker 10y ago
  BearBleed.

joatmon-snoo 10y ago

>> our tolerances are very different when kids are involved > > Interesting. Why? The data is much less valuable It's the why-do-I-care-about-my-privacy argument - but it's even more personal now, because it's not just you, it's your kids. There's always that extra creep factor when it comes to children.

caf 10y ago

Interesting. Why? The data is much less valuable: Because while we can make an informed decision about putting our own data into such a service, weighing up the risks and benefits, a four year old cannot - a parent is making that decision for them, and when you are making such a decision on behalf of someone else it behooves you to act more conservatively than when deciding on your own behalf.

Spooky23 10y ago

How about the kids who don't leave cutesy messages and saw disturbing or threatening things? How about the parent who sits on the thing and says something? Voice data was once safe in its obscurity... now I have a $2 app on my phone that can do decent voice transcription. It's just one more thing to worry about.

ams6110 10y ago

If it is not considered amazingly stupid, or at least ignorant to not understand that the magic talking bear has a computer in it, and that if the computer wants the wifi password it probably uses the internet, and that if the entire purpose of the device is to make recordings available to you over the internet... then I despair. I think you vastly overestimate the degree to which non-technical consumers understand computers, wifi, the internet, email, web sites, apps on their phone, and the differences and boundaries between any of those.

orless 10y ago

> Hardly identity thief material. Audio messages can be used to train a system which then will be able to mimic the voice of the child, almost indistinguishable from the original. AI of this kind will be commodity (i.e. easily accessible by criminals) pretty soon if not today.

Intermernet 10y ago

Extreme example: Someone steals the recording saying "Hello mommy and daddy, I love you so much." They then manage to contact you, reporting that they have kidnapped your children. They play you the recording to prove they are in your custody and demand an immediate ransom payout. Highly prone to error, not very likely to work, incredibly evil and likely to end up with the perpetrator in jail, but, unfortunately, the sort of thing that a desperate criminal might try, and even more unfortunately, it only needs to succeed once for someone to consider it a viable tactic. I know this is stupidly unlikely occurrence, but extrapolate it with a bit more sophistication and you can start to see why this is actually quite nasty identity theft material.

kriro 10y ago

Wouldn't you say that as a parent it is your obligation to protect the child's privacy? The threat model doesn't even matter, there will be one eventually. All data can be used and combined (now or in the future). Is it that hard to imagine a future where recordings of a child can be used to recreate the voice of the same person as an adult...hardly. I find a "where's the harm" attitude towards privacy/data collection very troubling...doubly so if you are making that decision for someone else who can't protect themselves yet. Ethically it's probably a bigger problem than having such a lax attitude about your own privacy (which if perfectly fine/freedom of choice). And yes I also rant and rave about parents who post pictures of their children everywhere.