Amazon Echo recorded private conversation and randomly sent it to someone

Alexa sent private audio to a random contact, Portland family says

A family in Washington claims that their Alexa device recorded audio of a private conversation and sent it out to a random contact without warning.

One minute, you're relaxing at home discussing the merits of hardwood floors. The next, a contact is calling you and telling you you're being hacked.

That's how a family in Portland, Washington is describing their experience with Amazon's Alexa after the popular voice assistant reportedly sent audio of a private conversation to one of their contacts -- all without them knowing it.

The family had filled their home with Alexa devices in order to control their lights, HVAC and security system using voice commands. Then, they say that one of the father's work contacts called to let them know that he'd received an Alexa call broadcasting audio of a private conversation about flooring -- a call the family says they never asked Alexa to make.

Now, they tell the local news that their Alexa devices are left permanently unplugged.

"I felt invaded," said Danielle, who didn't want her last name used. "A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, 'I'm never plugging that device in again, because I can't trust it.'"

Danielle says that the family got in touch with Amazon's engineering department, who were able to confirm that audio had indeed been unintentionally broadcast.

"They said, 'Our engineers went through your logs, and they saw exactly what you told us, they saw exactly what you said happened, and we're sorry,'" Danielle told local news network KIRO 7.

"He apologized like 15 times in a matter of 30 minutes and he said, 'We really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, this is something we need to fix!'"

Amazon did not immediately respond to our attempts to verify Danielle's claims, but the company confirmed the incident to KIRO 7, offering them the following response:

"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."

Danielle says that Amazon was unable to pinpoint exactly what had caused the unintentional broadcast, but there are a couple of possibilities. Users who have opted into Alexa's calling and messaging feature can share their contacts list to let Alexa scan for any phone numbers registered to her database. Then, they can call those contacts by name using commands like, "Alexa, call Gary."

It's possible that one of Danielle's Echo devices mistakenly thought that it had heard someone say, "Alexa, call [contact's name]," as the family was speaking to each other. In that case, this is the Alexa equivalent of a butt-dial, and little more than a minor cautionary tale for the voice-activated smart home. (Though it would be fair to ask Amazon what it's doing to make Alexa better at identifying false positive commands and disregarding them.)

Another, more alarming possibility is that something else triggered the device, or that it malfunctioned. Either one would come with problematic implications about Amazon's ability to protect its customers' privacy.

When we hear more from Amazon, we'll update this story.

https://www.cnet.com/news/alexa-sent-pr ... mily-says/

Imagine if you were slagging off your boss or something... :slol:

Not even once.

I once butt dialed my in-laws without realising it and talked some gooseberry fool about them with the wife while they listened in. That was fun to find out.

Man what's the world coming to when you can't even fill your home with microphones connected to the internet and maintain your privacy.

Who could have ever foreseen such an outcome?

Odds are it misunderstood and triggered a call, however when doing it it would have been flashing green.

It's why I have drop in disabled as I don't want it just auto connecting people if they call. I only allow dropping between echos.

Just another reason why i'll never have one.

Good article here:

The House That Spied on Me

Also a fantastic twitter account for all things IoT:

https://twitter.com/internetofshit

Here we go. That's bad voice detection, and a technical glitch. It isn't random if it has an identifiable root cause. Just disable the voice calls or retrain the voice. Or don't willfully choice to use the technology. Or choose a smart speaker that doesn't do this. Or build your own. "I felt invaded", what a load of gooseberry fool, you installed smart speakers all over your house! So maybe don't do that, and don't enable calling.

This technology is going to strawberry float up like anything else, but this isn't spying. It's exactly the same as a pocket dial, and that is never sensationalised. FUD.

Mine frequently does stuff I don't want it to but it's purely because the voice recognition isn't perfect and sometimes words that sound a bit like the 'wake' word (echo) activate the system.

Its just a case of unfortunately timed tech failure, not a breach of privacy.

I honestly don't understand why someone would willingly have one of these in their house.

We already have a thread about the privacy issues and the consumer benefits by the way.

This is just a bad PR for Amazon's device strawberry floating up and customers being ignorant of the fact they've wired their entire house with not infallible voice detection and activation technology. It's like having a butler in your house and complaining that they told their friends something you said when they misheard their name and walked into the room at an awkward moment. Get a better butler or don't have one. Don't blame butlers for "invading" your home.

Do you not think it's psychologically interesting that people will opt into/use things that make them feel uncomfortable or invaded when exposed, but don't because these concerns are hidden away?

I don't think it's a simple case of "either accept it or don't". I think there is an element of psychological exploitation, for want of a better word.

I do find that psychologically interesting. But I read the privacy policy for my device and I'm ok with it. I make that trade because the device or service (any device or service) benefits me. Please bear in mind I have a disability and already sacrifice a lot of things. I'm not a typical consumer.

I think it's a mixture of consumer unawareness, and lack of respect for their own privacy, but you can't force people to understand how these things work and look at their own privacy controls and policies that govern them a lot of the time. So I think there is more at risk to the consumer than they themselves realise. And yes that is taken advantage of, but I don't believe it's as malicious as is sometimes purported to be. People have a choice to use or not use these products, just as they have a choice to smoke, drive a car, walk into traffic, sign up to Facebook, or browse the Internet. Yet billions of people do.

The privacy controls and activity logs for Google are really very good and well designed with a lot of clear language and videos etc. Nobody is forced to use these services but they sacrifice some elements of their privacy because the product is good. That's up to them.

90% of the day I am telling my Mini something like "play origin of symmetry". That isn't an invasion of my privacy if that is the data I am choosing to send, and it is encrypted in text form and I'm given full control to delete it at any time. And that's only in one room, and I can always switch it off (there's a switch) or unplug it.

Like I've said before I probably wouldn't fill my house with these things.

I think maybe it would be better if data was expunged automatically every 30 days or something. The hoarding of data is something I don't like, but I still have the option to manually delete it, and I get regular pop ups telling me, hey did you know you can do this. If people just dismiss them, that's their choice.

Whilst I agree that users need to get themselves into a more informed position and that I personally wouldn't have any of these devices near my home for all sorts of reasons - I still think it is underselling the issue to equate this to a pocket dial.

If you pocket dial someone then that is an example of you misusing the device - you put it in your pocket without locking it and it is therefore your fault if it calls someone and they get to hear whatever you are up to. In this situation I cannot see that the user has made any mistake that they could reasonably be deemed to have avoided - the device is 100% at fault for behaving incorrectly.

Green Gecko wrote:I do find that psychologically interesting. But I read the privacy policy for my device and I'm ok with it. I make that trade because the device or service (any device or service) benefits me. Please bear in mind I have a disability and already sacrifice a lot of things. I'm not a typical consumer.

Just to clarify, I'm not criticising or questioning your use of any products/services. The fact that you are informed about how they work and have read the privacy policies is great

Jenuall wrote:Whilst I agree that users need to get themselves into a more informed position and that I personally wouldn't have any of these devices near my home for all sorts of reasons - I still think it is underselling the issue to equate this to a pocket dial.

If you pocket dial someone then that is an example of you misusing the device - you put it in your pocket without locking it and it is therefore your fault if it calls someone and they get to hear whatever you are up to. In this situation I cannot see that the user has made any mistake that they could reasonably be deemed to have avoided - the device is 100% at fault for behaving incorrectly.

The mistake is then not noticing it is flashing green after it activated. As well as having the drop in functionality enabled allowing to silently connect to someone else without it ringing.

There is a cock up from Amazon that meant the device misheard and I'm sure they will patch it out.

Personally I think maybe it should says something as it connects a a dropin session then you have an audible alert as well as the green light.

Errkal wrote:
Jenuall wrote:Whilst I agree that users need to get themselves into a more informed position and that I personally wouldn't have any of these devices near my home for all sorts of reasons - I still think it is underselling the issue to equate this to a pocket dial.

If you pocket dial someone then that is an example of you misusing the device - you put it in your pocket without locking it and it is therefore your fault if it calls someone and they get to hear whatever you are up to. In this situation I cannot see that the user has made any mistake that they could reasonably be deemed to have avoided - the device is 100% at fault for behaving incorrectly.

The mistake is then not noticing it is flashing green after it activated. As well as having the drop in functionality enabled allowing to silently connect to someone else without it ringing.

Really? That's terrible usability design that it should require a user to be constantly looking at the device! :lol:

Jenuall wrote:
Errkal wrote:
Jenuall wrote:Whilst I agree that users need to get themselves into a more informed position and that I personally wouldn't have any of these devices near my home for all sorts of reasons - I still think it is underselling the issue to equate this to a pocket dial.

If you pocket dial someone then that is an example of you misusing the device - you put it in your pocket without locking it and it is therefore your fault if it calls someone and they get to hear whatever you are up to. In this situation I cannot see that the user has made any mistake that they could reasonably be deemed to have avoided - the device is 100% at fault for behaving incorrectly.

The mistake is then not noticing it is flashing green after it activated. As well as having the drop in functionality enabled allowing to silently connect to someone else without it ringing.

Really? That's terrible usability design that it should require a user to be constantly looking at the device!

It's due to them having dropin setup on their account.

If you have it disabled it rings someone it plink plonks as it waits for them to answer they answer and boom connected.

With drop in it just connects silently. I understand the idea of dropin between devices in the house but to people it is daft. However it isn't the default setting.

On google it says, "Call xxx. Is that right? OK calling xxx now" although this was only implemented recently and it only works for businesses listed on Google and in your contacts list. It's pretty obvious. If you don't then hear that, and especially if you really have speakers in every room, and they're pretty loud (unless you've turned them down wherein they still make a blip blip sort of sound and blink with several surface/top-mounted LEDs), I think the customer is being a bit obtuse saying their privacy is being invaded. They're not paying attention to the automation they have set up, and what it's capable of doing.

I'm not sure it's a design issue, but a user awareness, how things work thing, sure. That is also Amazon or whoever's responsibility. At some point, a line has to be drawn as to how products are set up to be used responsibly and effectively, not doing things the customer wants, and the customer just not using things well. It's an interesting user experience problem. How does one argue when the customer is not using the product right? Can we design around all situations and limitations? I guess that's the ultimate goal.

Anyway, CNET notes it's more of a, "by the way, your device can do this, possibly by accident. So be aware of what your devices can do for you, and turn them off when you're not using them." That's one reason I think the microphone cut-out switch is a nice feature of the mini (sorry if it sounds like I'm advocating google here, I've also used an Alexa), and the LEDs flash up a warm lava sort of red and stay constantly red for that time the mic is off.

And if it wasn't really off, nerds would have found out. Is there any evidence it's not off when you do that?

Even still, unplug it from the cable. Then it really can't do any of these awful things people generally buy the device to do.

Amazon Echo recorded private conversation and randomly sent it to someone

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