Abusive neighbour is able to access my Alexa

[SecretSwirrel]

Firstly, my neighbour and I don’t get on. He doesn’t like me anymore for some reason and has displayed some pretty antisocial behaviours directed towards me. Needless to say I don’t talk to him anymore.

I’ve had various Alexa speakers since Nov last year however lately some strange things have been happening, e.g music suddenly playing on the Alexa while I’m nowhere near, at the bottom of the garden. I put this down to general randomness however at the weekend the kitchen Alexa randomly started playing TalkSport Radio, something I’ve never listened to but I know my regularly neighbour does.

Is there a chance he’s somehow managed deliberately access my Alexas?

….I’m slightly worried that he’s somehow accessed my WiFi. It’s randomly slow sometimes so is something I’d already suspected.

Change your wifi password?

Change the passwords?

Your Alexa may be able to hear what he's saying to his Alexa. We're a multi-Alexa household and often find the one in the living room doing what we asked, quietly, of the one in the kitchen.

You can change the wake word so when he says "Alexa, play TalkSport" your device won't respond.

Easy enough to check - go to the privacy settings of your Alexa and you'll see all the commands it's received. You can check and even listen back to what it heard when it did soemthing

You can change your Alexa’s name, so it responds to a different name.

First off, change your wifi password, and kick everything off the network that you don’t recognise if you know how to access the list of devices. Make your new password secure.

I don’t know about Alexa devices, but I know I can only talk to google nest devices from the same network - so sort that first.

Good idea, will check now

And yes, also change the name the Alexa answers to - I think you can pick echo or robot?

Ours is called Ziggy stops the adverts activating it.

Yep, change passwords and the command name to something different than "Alexa".
Check history of what commands it's had and go from there.
My mum once accidentally got her music playing on a neighbour's Alexa. Didn't realise until she'd continuously demanded Alexa turn the volume up. Eventually she heard it blaring through from theirs and hastily made it stop.
The neighbours never ever mentioned it but it must've been so bizarre 😂😂

Search online for "Disable Alexa Sidewalk setting." You have to turn it off yourself. I didn't bother when I first read about it, but then experienced a few interruptions. Since I turned the Sidewalk feature off I've had no issues.

Ziggy
Echo
Amazon or
Computer
Are the other wake words. The only one I haven't got in use is computer.