Alexa doing more then turning on lights.

Posted on
Thu Dec 29, 2016 8:03 pm
Sharek326 offline
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Alexa doing more then turning on lights.

Recently Amazon and Alexa have been in the news locally. Alexa apparently records everything said.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016 ... -a-murder/

Posted on
Thu Dec 29, 2016 8:12 pm
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: Alexa doing more then turning on lights.

Actually it doesn't, according to Amazon. Amazon claims that it buffers for 5 seconds and constantly overwrites that buffer, the buffer is in place only to listen for the keyword of "Alexa", so if you say "Alexa, turn on the light" once the processor kicks in because you said Alexa it can "rewind" and figure out that you also asked it to turn on the light.

Now, that's what ALL of the folks say except for Google - and with Google's privacy policy it's probably recording everything you say, turning it into searchable text and copyrighting it as it's own so you can never sue them (since you agree to this in their license agreement) and then, yea, the police can nab you on something you said a decade earlier. However, Apple and Amazon have claimed they do not retain the information.

Amazon isn't quite as data-farmy as Google so I doubt they have a reason to commit so much disk space to storing conversations but Google's sole purpose on earth is to data farm.

So, for what it's worth.

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Posted on
Thu Dec 29, 2016 8:58 pm
RogueProeliator offline
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Re: Alexa doing more then turning on lights.

Now, that's what ALL of the folks say except for Google

EXCEPT, that is exactly what Google does - just what the rest of them do... don't spread the paranoia:
Is Google Home recording all my conversations?
No. Google Home listens in short (a few seconds) snippets for the hotword. Those snippets are deleted if the hotword is not detected, and none of that information leaves your device until the hotword is heard.

The all use the recording of your searches for "learning purposes". I would have no doubt that Google keeps it longer and/or integrates it into their other products much more than Apple or Amazon... but at least at Google you can delete your recordings at any time you want. Not sure about Amazon (not saying you can't, but haven't seen an obvious place to do it). I would guess Apple is the best about not doing as much with it since their services are not as important / integrated.

But more to C4W's point, nothing in that article says a word about them providing any recordings or implying that data was stored, just that police requested it via warrant and some data was turned over (very well could just be your last actual searches which you can see yourself in the Alexa app so clearly they are stored).

Adam

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