Am I completely crazy or AIBU getting rid of Alexa?

[Konicek007]

Hello, call me paranoid but..would like some opinions.
We have Alexa Echo dot in the living room, purely because of the music, we not use it for anything else. We love it playing music through it. Hi
Yesterday me and my daughter ( 8 yrs) were having a conversation , her telling me about her horse toy she not longer wants, saying something in lines she doesn’t want to play with it anymore as she is too big now, to get rid of it etc..
Suddenly Alexa buttered in saying something like You are being warn and reported etc. We haven’t heard the message clear as we also had a music playing from radio.
None of us used the woke up word Alexa for her to respond, plus the music was playing in background but we did heard her saying about warning us..
Now I heard stories about these speakers are actually spying on your home but I never believed it.
My friend husband works for well know computer company as IT developer and he always kept saying to avoid these things in our home.
Now I’m actually paranoid and thinking to get rid of Alexa.
Your opinions please. ( don’t laugh)

47
If you only use it for music switch it off at the wall when not in use. They do listen to everything.

If I switch it off every time, then I think the setting will go too and have to start every time from beginning?

Have you checked on the app what she actually said?

Alexa lives in teens room where he asked its endless inane questions.

YANBU- pointless, marketing gimmick anyway. Not to mention data protection.

And what she thought you said?

do you ever order anything over the phone where you have to read out your credit card number? Name/number/expiry/security digits? In which case having a device such as alexa makes you a potentially fair target for credit card fraud

Possibly. But so does handing your card to someone in a shop or restaurant. Just the act of giving the card details to someone over the phone puts you at risk of fraud, regardless of whether Alexa is listening to it.

I would never have anything like this in my home for this reason!

Yeah just look on the app for what she heard and the response.

I have one I’m every room. Unless your making bombs or talking about burying a body in your garden they’re not interested in people’s inane everyday conversations.

Not to the same extent, but you also couldn’t pay me to have a ‘ring’ doorbell.

Me neither! And if anyone has one I knock on the door instead. I hate all this all invasive media. Siri is turned off on my phone too. That's as bad as Alexa.

Of course it's listening to you all the time. And targeting advertisements. But unless you have something to hide I don't see what the issue is.

@Konicek007 no. My friend turns it off when not using for music. It just takes a moment to turn on

@zafferana it still records even if you don't ring it. It's motion sensitive

Yes I'd be concerned about what you were being warned about.

Animal cruelty? Terrorism?

There's me thinking I'm farting in private 😱😱

I'm probably overly paranoid as I work close to the industry, but have unplugged our Alexa a couple of years ago.

www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/tech/amazon-alexa-listening/index.html

It's probably not malicious, but just a way to earn more money with consumer data and trying to get a competitive edge in the voice space over Google.

Where do I check what she said on my app? I can’t see anything...

@zafferana it still records even if you don't ring it. It's motion sensitive

I was worried it might. Seriously, we are living in a surveillance state now (most CCTV of any country in the world too apparently), and people are paying for these devices! And we criticise the Chinese and the Russians for trying to spy on us! Oh the irony ...

Go onto the app it will show you what she said and why..

Possibly. But so does handing your card to someone in a shop or restaurant. Just the act of giving the card details to someone over the phone puts you at risk of fraud, regardless of whether Alexa is listening to it. well, leaving your house puts you at risk of being burgled, but you don’t leave the front door unlocked because it could happen anyway do you?

At the moment you’re recording your credit card details with no idea as to who is listening to them or what they’re doing with them. And it’s never advised to hand over your credit card in a restaurant or shop, but if you do then you can potentially trace back to where you let the card out of your sight, whereas if you’re paying for numerous items while alexa merrily records there is no recourse.

The Alexa isn’t ‘listening’ all of the time, listening suggests a level of processing which isn’t there for a robot. It’s not ‘listening’ any more than a motion activated camera is ‘watching’ all of the time. The Alexa is scanning for the activation word but if it doesn’t hear it then the words/ conversations etc it hears are not processed or recorded or stored anywhere. Alexa isn’t a little woman sat in the machine thinking about what you’ve said, it’s a non-sentient robot do even of it has ‘heard’ a conversation (or rather scanned the sound waves for the trigger word) nothing happens with it. The technology for picking up voices also isn’t that great in my experience, I find I have to talk very slowly, loudly and clearly to get Alexa to pick up my voice and not at the pace, speed or volume of a normal conversation.

Obviously sometimes Alexa will be triggered by a word that wasn’t the trigger word but sounded similar to the robot and can start trying to scan a conversation for an order and it may then pick up on key words and try and do something you haven’t asked for, but that’s because it’s not sophisticated enough to recognise when it’s been called by mistake.

I can see some of the concerns about the possibility of it being hacked etc but the idea that it’s ‘listening’ to all conversations and ‘spying’ on houses seems a bit tinfoil hat to me, as if Amazon can afford to employ thousands of people to sift through the hours of idle, muffled conversation just in the hope of getting some extra information about shopping habits etc.

As others have said it’s phones which people should be worried about when it comes to giving away info as there is a wealth of information on there - messages to friends/ family, browsing history, internet banking, contactless payments, location tracking, photos etc. Think of all the information your phone holds compared to a robot that doesn’t even have a camera and only picks up voices. If Amazon wanted to spy on people they’d be a million times better bringing out a smartphone than using Alexa.

Everything you say and do is recorded and stored and may later be used as evidence against you
We will soon also be marketed devices which scan the space and can detect what you're actually doing

we have them unplugged unless actually using them, mainly because it can suddenly start, ours has been known to suddenly start playing a song based on whatever word alexa has picked up and does catch random conversations, you can check on the app your history, and it often does have reference to conversations if left plugged in, we have all the privacy settings set too.

We are told when working at home we must have ‘her’ switched off - HMRC

I’ve never really understood the point of Alexa anyway. Is it really that difficult to get off your arse and put some music on or to just manually order something off the internet? No. It must save people 5 mins a week. It’s a totally pointless gadget

Similarly I didn’t enable Siri as, again, it’s pointless. It’s a nice gimmick and would be fun for a week or too but eventually everyone just ignores Siri and forgets about it

they don't need people to sift through all the data they just need to design the algorithm in the right way so that they can profile everyone who's data they capture
we all work for Google and Amazon, we all train the algorithms which they use to profile us so that they can monetize our behaviour for their own profit