Don’t Freak Out About That Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Situation
On Thursday, Seattle news station KIRO 7 published a disconcerting story. A Portland family discovered that a snippet of private conversation had been recorded by an Amazon Echo and sent to a random person in their contact list. The report instantly sparked concern and outrage that Amazon's Echo smart speaker is listening to and recording much more than the company claims.
The woman, who only identified herself as Danielle, said that one of her husband's employees called the family to say that he had received a text message containing an audio recording of one of their conversations about hardwood floors. "I felt invaded," she told KIRO 7. "A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, 'I'm never plugging that device in again, because I can't trust it.'" The episode renews longstanding debate about whether the privacy protections built into smart assistants are adequate and whether the benefits of the devices outweigh the risks of keeping a potentially live mic in your home.
WIRED couldn't contact Danielle for more information about the incident, because her full name has not been released, but an Amazon spokesperson did provide an explanation: “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 customer's contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right.'"
