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I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with

by bentt 2y ago

I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with Amazon and Alexa. My wife has always been skeeved out by the devices, and I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. Whether this is true or not, it's obvious that the company can no longer be trusted. So yeah we're just going to get a cardboard box, put it in the kitchen, and pile all the Alexa stuff into it and Ebay it. We'll use the $21 we get for all the devices to buy ice cream or something.

ffhhj 2y ago
We should make AI generated conversations to overload their surveilance.
tiahura 2y ago
Seems kinda paranoid. I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off, or been harmed by any assistant listening.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed in an airplane accident. It still happens. (No, I'm not saying that Alexa data sharing is equal to physical harm in an airplane accident -- just highlighting that this is a silly argument).
- diggan 2y ago
  You're never met anyone who been able to prove harm. If your insurance payments increases 5% because Amazon sold the data to some broker, who then sold it to your insurance company, who figures you're living a slightly more risky life because you go outside 7% more than the average person, how would you even begin to prove this?
  - edoceo 2y ago
    Have to start with a lawsuit (after fighting arbitration clause) then mountains of discovery. It would take years and cost lots of money.
- fads_go 2y ago
  Poster said that unplugging the device made their home more peaceful. This implies that having the device on was creating a constant, albeit low-level, harm. "harm" is a tricky word.
  - pesus 2y ago
    Yep. I think we usually underestimate the low level anxiety and adverse psychological effects of one knowing they're always being recorded/watched. Usually this only applies to being outside the home, which is bad enough imo, but bringing it into the home where you're supposed to be able to relax and have a reprieve from being surveilled cannot be good for the psyche. I would not be surprised if this (in combination with social media, and everyone always having a smart phone camera, etc) is a contributing factor in many of the psychological and societal issues people, especially younger people, are experiencing these days.
- mmooss 2y ago
  What about political oppression? It's hard to argue, at this point, that the US federal government and others wouldn't obtain and use the data. Would Jeff Bezos stand up to them?
  - pesus 2y ago
    Good point. Bezos would likely be encouraging, if not facilitating that oppression.
venusenvy47 2y ago
I personally assume that they wouldn't be processing all sound at all time from a device because it would be massively expensive for them. Obviously, it's technically possible that they could be, but I don't see how it would be financially possible. If we talk about targeted surveillance, then that is certainly financially possible. But I find it unlikely I would be targeting among the millions of people using these.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  I don’t know why anyone in tech believes the myth that their devices are streaming everything. It’s trivial to inspect traffic from a device. You can see that your devices aren’t constantly streaming data somewhere. You can see a burst of activity after a command. Beyond that, it would require a massive conspiracy for everyone who ever worked on these programs to never leak details about always-on surveillance recording. It would be a bombshell revelation and you’d see it everywhere.
  - LMYahooTFY 2y ago
    Doesn't it have to listen to everything locally for a command though? I wonder if only commands are keywords.
    - empressplay 2y ago
      The 'wake' (eg 'Alexa') trigger match is very fuzzy (which is why other words can sometimes set it off) and there's no analysis beyond looking for that particular trigger
      - uoaei 2y ago
        The first point is obviously true, the second point is just an assumption you're making and trying to dress up as fact. Can't imagine why anyone would want to do that, unless maybe they work for Amazon in a capacity related to this data?
    - Aurornis 2y ago
natnatenathan 2y ago
We did this, we realized we never really used them. It has made our home feels a bit more peaceful. Our inflection point was the upsells we would get every time we talked to it. “Would you also like to shop for Prime Day?”
- Nullabillity 2y ago
  > “Would you also like to shop for Prime Day?” Holy shit, what?!
flanbiscuit 2y ago
My partner and I have both an Alexa and a Google Home Assistant and we leave the mic off on both devices. The Alexa we got because we have a Blink doorbell and it connects to the Alexa in order to make a sound when someone rings the doorbell. The Google Home Assistant came with the Google Nest Wifi Mesh extender. We both care about privacy so that's why we turned them off (but not enough to not have the physical devices in our house). I sometimes wonder if those mic switches are hardware switches and can amazon or google override them. edit: fixed typo, missing a "to" in "to not have"
- m3rc 2y ago
  I don't think it's a good idea to have that doorbell, or any doorbell that is surveilling at all times and you don't own the recordings. Who knows who is watching them.
- jjulius 2y ago
  >... we have a Blink doorbell... >We both care about privacy...
  - dylan604 2y ago
    That contradiction stood out to me as well
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - uoaei 2y ago
    They care, just not enough to justify losing a single convenience that they didn't know they needed.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > we leave the mic off on both devices How is this controlled? They wouldn't at all be the first devices that deceitfully redefine 'off', or in their documentation say 'off, except ...', or just don't bother to implement it carefully because it's not a priority. Generally, I would trust something that physically turns it off - a physical switch that didn't just trigger software, but broke the circuit to the mic.
smeej 2y ago
My brother got rid of his when he saw the listening light on his Alexa devices turn on every time he asked Siri a question. His house is all Siri devices now. I don't know when else they're listening, but that was enough to make him uncomfortable.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Uncomfortable with one brand, yet not another. So, not really that uncomfortable?
  - CharlesW 2y ago
    They're night and day in terms of privacy. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/alexa-help-me-which-smart-speaker-has-the-best-privacy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/alexa-help-me-which-s...
tetris11 2y ago
> I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. The wake word requires very little compute, but still requires sampling the background every second or so. Makes you wonder what other unofficial wake words are baked in there.
- DaSHacka 2y ago
  I wonder if anyone's poked around the firmware before to discover the others
TriangleEdge 2y ago
Alexa listens to more then the wake word. I've had this recommend products on Amazon while my wife and I were having a conversation at the dinner table. It also recommended calling 911 while I was talking about fire. It's a spying device people willingly put in their homes for the convenience of a timer you can active with your voice. Edit: It could be that it activated mishearing "Alexa". I don't have hard evidence of mass spying. I think this wouldn't be hard to prove intercepting the data using something like Wireshark. Even if it's encrypted, you could tell by the data size. The recommending products while chatting with my wife anecdote happened multiple times tho, which convinced me to relocate the Alexa device in the garbage. It seems unlikely to me to not mine the voice data to generate ads, or to do law enforcement.
- EGreg 2y ago
  Just wait until people start buying Tesla’s optimus robots! Cheap and ubiquitous surveillance will be the norm in the future.
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    Cheap and ubiquitous surveillance is the norm in the present.
    - yubblegum 2y ago
      Everyone carries a little snitch on them. Even if you opt out of using a mobile device, the chances of the person you are talking to having it on them is effectively 100%. And I am nearly certain that one way or another 'they' have voice biometrics on all of us. Thank god we live in a country with strong checks & balances...
    - sitkack 2y ago
      Every Tesla is constantly recording, so if anyone has been within 50 feet of a Tesla, they already have your picture.
      - 2y ago
_fat_santa 2y ago
My wife loves Alexa devices and we have two at home. Knowing I would loose the privacy argument with her, I did the next best thing and setup a pi-hole. With that pi-hole I discovered that Alexa devices send one request to answer your question and another one to Amazon analytics and it was pretty easy to allow one but block the other. Though I'll be honest, there's really no way of knowing if they are sending analytics data with the "main" payload and I suspect they are, so I'm not entirely sure how good my method is.
- olyjohn 2y ago
  You're only seeing the requests that are using your DNS server. If the Alexa device has backup IPs or hostnames or even it's own DNS server, you're not gonna see those.
- bentt 2y ago
  I love that you did this and I think it's some reassurance. Agree that the "main" payload has always been what I suspected they were cheating on. They are highly, highly incentivized to listen for other words and at the very least tick an int somewhere to sell that data.
SteveJS 2y ago
Is there firmware to turn the Bose Alexa into just a Bluetooth speaker? I see there is a bose-dfu utility on github, but its list of supported devices is short (because the person who made it didn’t have other devices). The bose speaker is sufficiently nice i might try to salvage it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by bentt 2y ago

ffhhj 2y ago

We should make AI generated conversations to overload their surveilance.

tiahura 2y ago

Seems kinda paranoid. I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off, or been harmed by any assistant listening.

ziddoap 2y ago
>I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed by not turning that setting off I've yet to meet anyone, who's met anyone, who's been harmed in an airplane accident. It still happens. (No, I'm not saying that Alexa data sharing is equal to physical harm in an airplane accident -- just highlighting that this is a silly argument).
diggan 2y ago
You're never met anyone who been able to prove harm. If your insurance payments increases 5% because Amazon sold the data to some broker, who then sold it to your insurance company, who figures you're living a slightly more risky life because you go outside 7% more than the average person, how would you even begin to prove this?
- edoceo 2y ago
  Have to start with a lawsuit (after fighting arbitration clause) then mountains of discovery. It would take years and cost lots of money.
fads_go 2y ago
Poster said that unplugging the device made their home more peaceful. This implies that having the device on was creating a constant, albeit low-level, harm. "harm" is a tricky word.
- pesus 2y ago
  Yep. I think we usually underestimate the low level anxiety and adverse psychological effects of one knowing they're always being recorded/watched. Usually this only applies to being outside the home, which is bad enough imo, but bringing it into the home where you're supposed to be able to relax and have a reprieve from being surveilled cannot be good for the psyche. I would not be surprised if this (in combination with social media, and everyone always having a smart phone camera, etc) is a contributing factor in many of the psychological and societal issues people, especially younger people, are experiencing these days.
mmooss 2y ago
What about political oppression? It's hard to argue, at this point, that the US federal government and others wouldn't obtain and use the data. Would Jeff Bezos stand up to them?
- pesus 2y ago
  Good point. Bezos would likely be encouraging, if not facilitating that oppression.

venusenvy47 2y ago

I personally assume that they wouldn't be processing all sound at all time from a device because it would be massively expensive for them. Obviously, it's technically possible that they could be, but I don't see how it would be financially possible. If we talk about targeted surveillance, then that is certainly financially possible. But I find it unlikely I would be targeting among the millions of people using these.

Aurornis 2y ago
I don’t know why anyone in tech believes the myth that their devices are streaming everything. It’s trivial to inspect traffic from a device. You can see that your devices aren’t constantly streaming data somewhere. You can see a burst of activity after a command. Beyond that, it would require a massive conspiracy for everyone who ever worked on these programs to never leak details about always-on surveillance recording. It would be a bombshell revelation and you’d see it everywhere.
- LMYahooTFY 2y ago
  Doesn't it have to listen to everything locally for a command though? I wonder if only commands are keywords.
  - empressplay 2y ago
    The 'wake' (eg 'Alexa') trigger match is very fuzzy (which is why other words can sometimes set it off) and there's no analysis beyond looking for that particular trigger
    - uoaei 2y ago
      The first point is obviously true, the second point is just an assumption you're making and trying to dress up as fact. Can't imagine why anyone would want to do that, unless maybe they work for Amazon in a capacity related to this data?
  - Aurornis 2y ago

natnatenathan 2y ago

We did this, we realized we never really used them. It has made our home feels a bit more peaceful. Our inflection point was the upsells we would get every time we talked to it. “Would you also like to shop for Prime Day?”

Nullabillity 2y ago
> “Would you also like to shop for Prime Day?” Holy shit, what?!

flanbiscuit 2y ago

My partner and I have both an Alexa and a Google Home Assistant and we leave the mic off on both devices. The Alexa we got because we have a Blink doorbell and it connects to the Alexa in order to make a sound when someone rings the doorbell. The Google Home Assistant came with the Google Nest Wifi Mesh extender. We both care about privacy so that's why we turned them off (but not enough to not have the physical devices in our house). I sometimes wonder if those mic switches are hardware switches and can amazon or google override them. edit: fixed typo, missing a "to" in "to not have"

m3rc 2y ago
I don't think it's a good idea to have that doorbell, or any doorbell that is surveilling at all times and you don't own the recordings. Who knows who is watching them.
jjulius 2y ago
>... we have a Blink doorbell... >We both care about privacy...
- dylan604 2y ago
  That contradiction stood out to me as well
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- uoaei 2y ago
  They care, just not enough to justify losing a single convenience that they didn't know they needed.
mmooss 2y ago
> we leave the mic off on both devices How is this controlled? They wouldn't at all be the first devices that deceitfully redefine 'off', or in their documentation say 'off, except ...', or just don't bother to implement it carefully because it's not a priority. Generally, I would trust something that physically turns it off - a physical switch that didn't just trigger software, but broke the circuit to the mic.

smeej 2y ago

My brother got rid of his when he saw the listening light on his Alexa devices turn on every time he asked Siri a question. His house is all Siri devices now. I don't know when else they're listening, but that was enough to make him uncomfortable.

dylan604 2y ago
Uncomfortable with one brand, yet not another. So, not really that uncomfortable?
- CharlesW 2y ago
  They're night and day in terms of privacy. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/alexa-help-me-which-smart-speaker-has-the-best-privacy/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/alexa-help-me-which-s...

tetris11 2y ago

> I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. The wake word requires very little compute, but still requires sampling the background every second or so. Makes you wonder what other unofficial wake words are baked in there.

DaSHacka 2y ago
I wonder if anyone's poked around the firmware before to discover the others

TriangleEdge 2y ago

Alexa listens to more then the wake word. I've had this recommend products on Amazon while my wife and I were having a conversation at the dinner table. It also recommended calling 911 while I was talking about fire. It's a spying device people willingly put in their homes for the convenience of a timer you can active with your voice. Edit: It could be that it activated mishearing "Alexa". I don't have hard evidence of mass spying. I think this wouldn't be hard to prove intercepting the data using something like Wireshark. Even if it's encrypted, you could tell by the data size. The recommending products while chatting with my wife anecdote happened multiple times tho, which convinced me to relocate the Alexa device in the garbage. It seems unlikely to me to not mine the voice data to generate ads, or to do law enforcement.

EGreg 2y ago
Just wait until people start buying Tesla’s optimus robots! Cheap and ubiquitous surveillance will be the norm in the future.
- margalabargala 2y ago
  Cheap and ubiquitous surveillance is the norm in the present.
  - yubblegum 2y ago
    Everyone carries a little snitch on them. Even if you opt out of using a mobile device, the chances of the person you are talking to having it on them is effectively 100%. And I am nearly certain that one way or another 'they' have voice biometrics on all of us. Thank god we live in a country with strong checks & balances...
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Every Tesla is constantly recording, so if anyone has been within 50 feet of a Tesla, they already have your picture.
    - 2y ago

_fat_santa 2y ago

My wife loves Alexa devices and we have two at home. Knowing I would loose the privacy argument with her, I did the next best thing and setup a pi-hole. With that pi-hole I discovered that Alexa devices send one request to answer your question and another one to Amazon analytics and it was pretty easy to allow one but block the other. Though I'll be honest, there's really no way of knowing if they are sending analytics data with the "main" payload and I suspect they are, so I'm not entirely sure how good my method is.

olyjohn 2y ago
You're only seeing the requests that are using your DNS server. If the Alexa device has backup IPs or hostnames or even it's own DNS server, you're not gonna see those.
bentt 2y ago
I love that you did this and I think it's some reassurance. Agree that the "main" payload has always been what I suspected they were cheating on. They are highly, highly incentivized to listen for other words and at the very least tick an int somewhere to sell that data.

SteveJS 2y ago

Is there firmware to turn the Bose Alexa into just a Bluetooth speaker? I see there is a bose-dfu utility on github, but its list of supported devices is short (because the person who made it didn’t have other devices). The bose speaker is sufficiently nice i might try to salvage it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]