I want an Alexa!

[behappy1736]

I want an Alexa and DH insists we aren't having one as they are 'Unsafe and a potential hacking heaven' 🤦🏻‍♀️
I've tried explaining that loads of people have them but he says that they are an invasion of privacy and vulnerable to hackers gaining info and access to many thing.
Thoughts?!

I bought DH one for his last birthday, he was adamant he didn’t want one. I got him one anyway as he loves gadgets. It’s a big hit. We get wether updates on it, music, recipes, timer, turns the light on an off, (smart plug)
news, We don’t use it as much as we could but quite happy with what we do get from it.

As it says at the bottom of that article, you can opt out of that if you want. They make it clear that the do use some anonymised data to help with the voice recognition. I've no problem with that, but have opted out anyway as a family member didn't like the idea.

Again, they cannot use recognisable data for this as it's against the law (, certainly the law in the UK)

Sorry if this is a gag but you do realise it's not actual humans that listen? It's AI and bots listening for programmed words and phrases so companies can monetise content.

I might be misunderstanding, but they listen for the wake word and that's it. There are not a bunch of companies using ai to listen out for phrases that you're saying in your kitchen so they can flog you something related. Again also don't pass on the info to third parties without you knowing, as that's illegal.

Amazon's Alexa department is actually losing Amazon money as they cannot come up with ways to monetize the devices.

Mine has gone off TWICE at 4am top volume , terrified me!!!

It varies of course, right down to an individuals privacy settings, but if you were to read say What's Apps T's and C's you'll see that audio monitoring is there. Facebook always prided themselves on not using audio for data gathering but they just bought WA and got around it that way.

Its no different than companies gathering cookie data in order to target more effectively and minimise waste.

They do rely on people not being rigorous in the management of their settings/third party settings but typically the effect is you just get served content that is relevant.

I dont like Alexa and similar devices because of the potential there is for security lapses as technology changes.

@NomadicSoul there's been a lot of scandals over this kind of stuff over the years. I'm not saying it's the case with Alexa but just because it's illegal doesn't mean you should trust them. Did anything actually happen over Cambridge Analytica other than a few paltry fines?

saw this shown at an introductory training session on cybersecurity… it put me off.

Good news. That must be relatively new. Thanks for that, I didn't know.

True, but as I said to my child who was worried about the said they'd heard about Alexa's, they would face potentially limitless fines and massive negative press (it's Amazon, the media would love a good scandal). As I also said to them, the infrastructure required to monitor people and do something with all those millions upon millions of hours of recordings would be cripplingly expensive and of negligible comparative value. There are things in the world to study about (like leaving IOT devices with their default password), but personally, from my knowledge of the devices and the realities of monitoring people, I'm not concerned.

Boris Johnson carrots one hundred

In Welsh please Alexa

@NomadicSoul hm I'm not so sure, it's not done Facebook /meta much harm has it? I'm also not too concerned but it's not as straight forward as listening to what you're having for tea it's the harvesting of huge amounts of data which is processed by computers and using it to have an influence on society. It may not be Amazon but third parties who may be granted access.

I'm lazy and unprincipled as I continue to use these things, but I don't trust them or the law to protect me.

I'm with your DH on this one.

I’ve got five. We’ve done several experiments when we’ve talked loudly and at length about buying certain items that we would never really buy in front of Alexa. Not a single ad has appeared for those items on any device, all of which are linked.

Wouldnt be without ours. Our latest toy is guard mode, where the Alexas listen for broken glass or the smoke alarm while we’re out, and connect such events to our alarm. Brilliant. Also love routines, we have loads set up, one that switches everything off and sets the alarm when we go to bed, another puts the kettle on, sets the vac going and disarms the alarm on a morning, and my grandsons favourite turns all the lights blue and plays baby shark. We have one with a screen in the lounge which shows our photos on a loop and we can ask it to show us the outdoor cameras view so we can see what’s going on.

Previous entertainment has included Rick rolling DH whenever he walks into his office, and a fanfare when I arrive home. Poor DH is not especially tech savvy, so he’s at my mercy when it comes to Alexa shenanigans <evil cackle>

Love, love, love them.

Why? Genuine question, why would first name, serial number and account number worry you? What exactly do you think they can do with that info?

As I say, it's against the law for them to use data for a purpose that it was not agreed it would be used for and to pass on to third parties. Even if you don't trust Amazon, they would - as I said - need immense quantities of ever increasing storage to store all the data and very, very powerful computers to search through it all (in multiple languages and dialects) for anything of actual use. The amount of money, resource and effort that would involve, even if it were possible would be phenomenal and the potential reward and risk would not be worth it.

Places like GCHQ and the NSA could not store and sort all the data. There's been over 100 million Alexa devices sold (as of 2019). To record 24 hours of data needs about 24 GB. That means Amazon would need over 32,100 peta bytes of storage per day to record the data from all its devices. That's 8 times more data than everything Meta / Facebook has ever stored and that's for a single day. And that's without considering backing up the data.

That's a rough calculation and I may have made a mistake in the math, but you get the idea. It's not feasible to store and search through 100s of petabytes of voice data in multiple languages per day (and then get humans to analyse anything a computer thinks is possibly of interest) and even if it was, it would not be worth it for the return on investment.

Edit: it's 32 GB of data for 24 hours of voice recording.

I have a cheap one in the kitchen, I use it to remind me I’ve put something on to cook as I frequently go back upstairs to work and forget about it.

occasionally, I’ll check the weather or snow report in our up and coming holiday destination. That’s it, but it’s useful.

We have them all over the house and one in the car. It's linked to my Spotify. Very useful.

We have the apple version and I bloody love it but they are creepy sometimes, you’re talking about something and it shows up as an ad on your phone, or it switches on and says ‘I don’t know what to do about that’ or the like, your dh would be a bit freaked 😅

www.aboutamazon.co.uk/news/devices/busting-the-4-biggest-myths-about-amazons-alexa?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign=devices&utm_term=interests&utm_content=photo_people-copy_v1&twclid=24i1g7sxggslmcarmcmgcicrtt

Yeah they're great. Station one in every room and you can call your kids down for dinner without having to bellow up the stairs

I love ours. We have all got them. Ex not particularly techy and prob wouldn't have agreed. We are divorced! Yay!

Yes of course it's "Unsafe and a potential hacking heaven"' .

Do you have an actual Alexa in the car? How do you power it etc? Internet? Sorry if being dim lol!