everything you say to your echo/alexa has always been sent to amazon.
theres literally been leaks proving it.
I thought so… I was like wait what dont they already have to process all that data?! And no doubt its in a db somewhere… thats just how things are done. Even if they werent a malicious company, they would still need to save the data to improve the product and for analytics…
How the fuck does anyone even buy one of these
The same people who buy mobile phones; despite those being bugs/spy-devices.
At least, on mobile devices, it’s typically easier to install a privacy-focused firmware (like LineageOS or GrapheneOS). Those AI assistants are completely locked down.
I am sorry but the telephony system itself is fundamentally a privacy threat.
Wait till you find out about the internet and social media (including here).
So is the internet.
More directly comparable, is the Ring cameras inside the house.
Phones are at least easier to justify since everyone kinda needs one now and there aren’t many great private options, especially for the lay person
Lmao. Why complain about one and try to justify the other…
I meant they’re easier to justify in the sense that I see why people don’t put much thought into putting a spying device in their pocket, not that I agree with the disregard. Most peoples’ friends, family, employers, etc. all expect them to have a cell phone and be available by it. Additionally, the way most people interact with their phones, the spying is much less obvious. They joke about them “always listening”, but a lot of people don’t understand the privacy concerns of pretty typical internet use, so the fact that the device has more than just a microphone, it appears to be worth it to a more typical consumer than us.
Contrast that with an Alexa, google home, or apple home thing, devices which nobody cares if someone else doesn’t own, which most people only see as a microphone and speaker, and whose primary functionality is to always be listening to you. The skepticism is much easier to arise.
I’m not saying the level at which cell phones spy on their users is acceptable or even worth it, just that I see why the average user who isn’t conscious of their privacy doesn’t regard them with the same concern they do smart speakers.
If you give up your freedom for convenience, then you will lose both.
I mean yeah, but for a lot of people if they ditch their phone they’ll also lose their job and possibly relationships they value.
Cell phones spying on people isn’t good, but most people are simply not informed about how invasive they are and couldn’t make an informed decision if they tried. Pair that with the fact that cell phones are essential for a lot of modern life, and it’s not difficult to see why the average person is generally more wary of smart speakers than cell phones.
The whole damn situation was a trap.
I mean, it’s not convience. It’s outright necessary for most jobs.
True, but a mobile phone is basically a world brain, calculator, camera, flashlight, you can watch movies on it in hi def, hate it all you want, it’s one of the most versatile tools on the planet. An echo dot, it just spy garbage and nothing else
I mean what better spot to syphon of each and every piece of information about you…
I have a bunch in my house. It’s a glorified radio all I use it for is:
- Set timer for x minute
- What time is it
- Ask CBC to play radio one Toronto
- What is the weather today
For the convenience I accept the mining they may do.
Lists are also very handy!
@richardisaguy @Tea sometimes they just come free with stuff. We got given two Google ones when my husband bought a Pixel phone. We were going to sell them on but we never got round to it. You can physically turn off the microphone part though (at least it tells you it’s turned off so fingers crossed) so we use the one with a screen as a digital photo frame (and a speaker) and the other one as just a speaker.
You can get them on Amazon.
Well played.
You can also buy some on Facebook Marketplace.
I don’t think Google home listens in.
Because I’d absolutely be disappeared by now if it did.
If you do not want to set your voice recordings setting to ‘Don’t save recordings,’ please follow these steps before March 28th:
Am I the only one curious to know what these steps are? The image cuts off the rest of the email.
- Unplug your amazon echo devices
- Hit it with a hammer
- Send it to an electronics recycler
If anyone else is wondering, I’ve not found a verbatim quote of the steps but I did see an article that mentioned the consequences. It seems like you will be able to turn this off but it will disable Voice ID:
anyone with their Echo device set to “Don’t save recordings” will see their already-purchased devices’ Voice ID feature bricked. Voice ID enables Alexa to do things like share user-specified calendar events, reminders, music, and more. Previously, Amazon has said that “if you choose not to save any voice recordings, Voice ID may not work.” As of March 28, broken Voice ID is a guarantee for people who don’t let Amazon store their voice recordings.
The old “privacy focused” setting made speech processing local. The new “privacy focused setting” means that processing will happen on a remote server, but Amazon won’t store the audio after it’s been processed. Amazon could still fingerprint voices with the new setting, to know if it was you or your parents/parter/kid/roommate/whomever and give a person specific response, but for now at least they appear to not be doing so.
This all seems like it’s missing the point to me. If you own one of these devices you’re giving up privacy for convenience. With the old privacy setting you were still sending your processed speech to a server nearly every time you interacted with one of those devices because they can’t always react/provide a response on their own. Other than trying to avoid voice fingerprinting, it doesn’t seem like the old setting would gain you much privacy. They still know the device associated to the interaction, know where the device is located, which accounts it’s associated with, what the interaction was, etc. They can then fuse this information with tons of other data collected from different devices, like a phone or computer. They don’t need your unprocessed speech to know way too much about you.
In the age of techno-fascism, the people willingly pay to install the listening devices into their own homes.
If you think that’s wild, just wait until you discover how much they pay for having one they can carry around with them!
Today: “…they will be deleted after Alexa processes your requests.”
Some point in the not-so-distant future: “We are reaching out to let you know that your voice recordings will no longer be deleted. As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities, we have decided to no longer support this feature.”
“We lied and paid a $3M fine.”
Or simply “…they will be deleted after Alexa processes your request and generates a token for AI training”.
They could also transcribe the recording and only save that. I mean they absolutely will and surely already did do that.
And finally “We are reaching out to let you know Alexa key phrase based activation will no longer be supported. For better personalization, Alexa will always process audio in background. Don’t worry, your audio is safe with us, we highly care about your privacy.”
Who the hell is the manufacture to decide if a remote feature no longer functions? (I’m guessing people don’t rent these devices from Amazon - it’s your property).
I don’t need your concent, it’s in your best interests - Amazon
So… if you own an inexpensive Alexa device, it just doesn’t have the horsepower to process your requests on-device. Your basic $35 device is just a microphone and a wifi streamer (ok, it also handles buttons and fun LED light effects). The Alexa device SDK can run on a $5 ESP-32. That’s how little it needs to work on-site.
Everything you say is getting sent to the cloud where it is NLP processed, parsed, then turned into command intents and matched against the devices and services you’ve installed. It does a match against the phrase ‘slots’ and returns results which are then turned into voice and played back on the speaker.
With the new LLM-based Alexa+ services, it’s all on the cloud. Very little of the processing can happen on-device. If you want to use the service, don’t be surprised the voice commands end up on the cloud. In most cases, it already was.
If you don’t like it, look into Home Assistant. But last I checked, to keep everything local and not too laggy, you’ll need a super beefy (expensive) local home server. Otherwise, it’s shipping your audio bits out to the cloud as well. There’s no free lunch.
Also, the home assistant voice solution is still very much in it’s starting stage, and way behind where Alexa and similar commercial solutions are
Now they can hear me scream “shut the fuck up Alexa!!!” every time she says “…by the way…” when I just want to know what time it is.
Say this: “Alexa, disable by the way”
“Alexa, from now on, call me ‘Big Dick Daddy from Cincinnati’.”
Wait hold on
I wonder if I can get the Google assistant British lady to call me that
Edit: Lmfao it works
Me while cooking mac and cheese for the kids:
“Echo, set timer for 8 minutes”Echo: “
GOOD EVENING [me], SETTING TIMER FOR 8 MINUTES”No, shut the fuck up and just set the goddamn timer without the extra fluff. I’ve seen Ex Machina, I know you have no empathy, so knock off the “nice” shit and do what I fucking ask without anything else.
There are a few settings that make it better. Like enabling “brief mode” or something like that
I have brief mode on, she doesn’t give a shit. I need “say the absolute minimum number of words” mode.
You can buy an egg timer for a few bucks. They say the perfect number of words; zero.
I don’t need a timer though.
What is Alexa. Lol
Duh. This why no one should have this tech as the arbiters can never be trusted with public saftey/good.
Maybe I misread the actual text, but it sounds like the exact opposite, that it’s going to auto-delete what you say.
They delete the recording from your device…after it has been sent to Amazon to be stored and used limitless.
Ah I see, that changes it, we really need to adopt rules like Europe where they can only store your information for so long.
How disheartening. I knew going in that there would be privacy issues but I figured for the service it was fine. I also figure my phone is always listening anyway.
As someone with limited mobility, my echo has been really nice to control my smart devices like lights and TV with just my voice.
Are there good alternatives or should I just accept things as they are?
There aren’t any immediate drop in replacements that won’t require some work, but there is Home Assistant Voice - It just requires that you also have a Home Assistant server setup, which is the more labor intensive part. It’s not hard, just a lot to learn.
Thanks for the tip. I had thought of doing Home Assistant to automate things like lights but I use the Echo for other stuff too (like reminders and weather). I guess I’ll just wait for the open source tech to catch up.
And for now it’s voice assist is garbage in comparison. I have home assistant, and a few Alexa units, so I set up nabu and tried it, but it’s slow and can maybe do 1 in 5 commands, while Alexa is much more reliable.
If you traveled back in time and told J. Edgar Hoover that in the future, the American public voluntarily wire-tapped themselves, he would cream his frilly pink panties.
