An accident but a freaky one nonetheless
Danielle, who immediately unplugged all her Amazon Alexa devices, has requested a refund for her Amazon Alexa devices, reports KIRO. But she wasn't hacked - it was a bug with their Amazon Echos, which they had in every room. At first, the pair found it hard to believe that the smart-speaker might pull such a trick single-handedly and send their conversation to some random contact.
Danielle (surname withheld) told KIRO-TV she received a call from an employee of her husband who urged them to unplug their Echo devices, which use the Alexa software.
"I felt invaded, like total privacy invasion", Danielle said. The news station did not report her last name. An engineer tasked with checking her activity logs confirmed her account of events and repeatedly apologized for the mishap.
"He told us that the device just guessed what we were saying", she said. In a statement, Amazon said, "We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence". Companies like Amazon and Google say their devices only begin recording when their microphones hear a trigger word or phrase, like "Alexa" or "Hey Google".
"Alexa then asked out loud, '(contact name), right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'". After asking "to Whom?" should the message be sent, more background conversation was interpreted as a name in the family contacts list.
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Amazon claims this is an "unlikely...string of events". Previously Alexa and Echo speakers were in the news for laughing randomly, even when no particular command was given.
Audible offers "over 200,000 audiobooks to choose from", it'll take literally years of non-stop listening before you could possibly ever run out of content, while the service continues adding new titles on a regular basis anyway. Amazon said it closed that loophole.
Although Amazon maintains this was a malfunction rather than proof Alexa is always listening, the company has filed patent applications in the past for functionalities that involve always listening, such as an algorithm that would analyse when people say they "love" or "bought" something.
But with the latest case of Alexa recording and then sending a private conversation without user's knowledge, questions will be raised around what triggered this.
As of now, only Amazon Echo Plus smart speaker features a built-in smart home hub that connects and controls ZigBee smart devices.
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