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> So no, these devices are not "spying on you". - False positives for smart speakers aren't zero, the 3rd-party contractor controversies from a while back shou
by danShumway 6y ago
> So no, these devices are not "spying on you".
- False positives for smart speakers aren't zero, the 3rd-party contractor controversies from a while back should have already killed this myth.
- Most normal people probably aren't thinking about the implications of sending requests to 3rd parties when they set up these devices in their kid's rooms, and the marketing of the devices doesn't make any of that risk clear.
- Most normal people outside of HN probably aren't even fully aware of the fact that their recordings are stored for this long.
And even if it doesn't technically fall under the banner of "spying", it still has privacy implications, and we should be working to educate both technical and nontechnical people about what those privacy implications are; otherwise they won't be able to make informed choices about what level of risk they feel comfortable taking on.
Nontechnical people do not have the instincts or training to think about how device information can be stored, who can recover it, and how that information can be chained together and used against them. It is unambiguously good for publications like Wired to educate them about those risks.