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It was truly a bizarre experience. First we noticed a random intermittent ringing noise in the house and couldn’t figure out what it was. We tracked it down to
by lcvw 5y ago
It was truly a bizarre experience. First we noticed a random intermittent ringing noise in the house and couldn’t figure out what it was. We tracked it down to the Alexa but since there are no logs or notifications we didn’t know what had just happened. It seems the person hung up when they heard us looking around so we never saw any visible indication that anything was happening.
Once we figured it out, we then had to spend half a day going through the Alexa documentation (useless) and random threads on Reddit to figure out how the access control for this feature and Alexa in general works. Like I said, certain changes to your account cannot be made without contacting support and being escalated to a certain team. By the end of it I still could not be certain we had locked this person out because of the number of changes they had made to the account and how much of a mess the app is.
The thing I really don’t understand is that this feature has been deployed for over a year and has received negative attention in the press. It’s just unbelievable that they would ship a feature that can turn your Alexa into a listening device and not think through what could go wrong, and never revisit it in a year.
- raffraffraff 5y agoHonestly, I find it amazing that so many people let these things into their homes. The price you pay for such little actual utility isn't worth it. I won't use voice recognition on a single device. Not only do I not trust Google/Amazon, I don't trust that I wouldn't accidentally say something that triggers it to phone a person I'm talking about, or order something expensive in the internet. Home Assistant on my phone and lots of physical zigbee controllers works just fine for me. I don't want to talk to my devices. I have an in-law who uses voice recognition to dictate messages into WhatsApp extended family group and some of the shit she's posted is hilariously (unintentionally) spicy. Her kids get into stupid "conversations" with Alexa. They're 8. Just no.
- sneak 5y agoMost people believe that they have nothing to hide. To them, there is no cost in lost privacy because they do not value privacy. The sad part is, for most people who say this, it's true. Their lives indeed contain nothing interesting enough to be worth concealing.
- beardyw 5y agoSaddest thought of the day.
- genocidicbunny 5y agoWhen I'm feeling spicy, my response to that line of thinking is to ask that person for their house keys so I can come by sometime and look around. Or I'll ask them to unlock their phone so I can rummage around in their messages and photos.
- sneak 5y agoI know a fair number of people who would not object. The majority of people on Earth have pretty boring lives.
- genocidicbunny 5y agoThen I hold out my hand expectedly awaiting their house keys and phone.
- Tempest1981 5y agoDoes anyone's employer have rules about having company meetings (at home) with such devices nearby? Seems potentially risky.
- andylynch 5y agoYes - in fact some firms are recommending they be disabled altogether near work areas, including at home.
- White_Wolf 5y agoYes. Had them since WHF first started. We have different rules depending on the level of the meeting though. 40-50% of the meetings are low risk and they don't require removal or power off and these devices though. For medium risk or higher we run random tests during meetings to see if they have google and alexa around. Nothing fancy or anyting. We just have they devices play a song like "Never Gonna Give You Up".
- toomuchtodo 5y agoWe configured endpoint detection tools (ie Very Popular Endpoint Product) to scan local networks for these devices based on open ports and mac addresses. It is fairly straightforward to fingerprint them. Not foolproof (wifi isolation and other network segmentation), but low hanging fruit.
- tpxl 5y ago> I don't trust that I wouldn't accidentally say something that triggers it to phone a person I'm talking about Someone set their name on Xbox live to something like "XBox turn off" then got people to read his name, which would turn off their console. It's a harmless example, but it shows that people and devices are susceptible to this kind of attack.
- michaelrpeskin 5y agoJust like in the '90s we (silly script kiddies) put press "Alt-F4 to continue" on our websites.
- foobarian 5y ago> The price you pay for such little actual utility isn't worth it. It is for us. The use case that sold us is my partner cooks a lot and often needs to add reminders or update a shopping list, which is difficult with both hands dripping with raw chicken juice or dough or whatever. They were for sale a while ago for $30 a device and they are decent speakers to boot, better even than a $1k phone.
- raffraffraff 5y agoMy wife and I cook every day, and at the moment we're both using Nutracheck (so we're scanning barcodes and entering weights a lot as we cook). While I occasionally have to wipe my hands on a paper towel, I don't find myself incapacitated by sauce much of the time.
- thrashh 5y agoI’m not worried about my Google Home devices They’d have to work reliably first
- tinus_hn 5y agoDepending on your jurisdiction you might be able to successfully sue people who listen in on yo ur private conversations without you being aware.