Amazon Alexa Secretly Recorded This Conversation
You're in your house having a nice - and private - conversation, when someone calls you to tell you they just heard every single thing you were saying. Terrifying, right? That very thing happened to a couple in Portland, Oregon, after Amazon Alexa allegedly recorded their conversation and sent it to a friend.
Danielle and her husband got a call from someone in their contacts two weeks ago, telling them to unplug their devices immediately. He told them he had heard their entire discussion about hardwood floors from 176 miles away in his Seattle, Washington home, KIRO-TV reported.
"I felt invaded," Danielle told the news station. "A total privacy invasion," she said. After Danielle and her husband realized what had happened, they unplugged each of their several Alexa devices they use to control things in their house.
In a statement to the news station, Amazon said: "Amazon takes privacy very seriously. We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence. We are taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future."
She said Amazon has offered to "de-provision," the device - which would strip it of its functions to only smart-home features - but has refused to refund her.
So, how does something like this happen? Here's what Amazon told Business Insider:
"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."
Creeeeeepy.
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