lisa5•4d ago

My neighbor saw my smart speaker and asked if I knew it was always recording

I was chatting with my neighbor Carol over the fence last weekend and she pointed at my Amazon Echo on the kitchen counter. She said "You realize that thing is basically a microphone pipe straight to a corporation, right?" I laughed it off at first but later that night I actually looked up how much audio those devices store. Turns out they keep transcripts of everything they hear even if you didn't say the wake word. Has anyone else had a regular person make them feel dumb about their own privacy choices?

2 comments

2 Comments

phoenix294d ago

Actually that's not quite right about the transcripts. I read a deep dive from a privacy researcher a while back. The Echo only saves recordings if you say Alexa or whatever the wake word is. It might buffer audio for a few seconds before that but those are supposedly deleted if not triggered. That said, I totally get why your neighbor freaked you out. I had the same moment when my buddy showed me the privacy settings page on Amazon where you can literally listen back to everything it stored for you. Makes you realize how many accidental triggers probably happen in a day without you noticing.

xena3734d ago

I mean, "microphone pipe straight to a corporation" is a little dramatic, don't you think?" Look, I get the concern in theory, but my Echo has been sitting in my living room for two years and I've never once seen a targeted ad based on something I didn't ask it. If anything, it's probably listening to me argue with my cat more than anything interesting. Unless Carol's got some inside info, I'm not losing sleep over some company hearing me ask about the weather or what song is playing.