I see lots of people talking about smart speakers in here but people are actually listening to what these speakers are recording and sometimes they are recording when you don't realise (due to inadvertent activation).
Here is the full article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone…
Yea, pretty much. Anyone that uses voice assistants or Android knows their data is being harvested.
While I refuse to use both, I still think this is overblown and not as big a deal as clickbait articles make it out to be.
Not only is there an option to turn it off but it's a sampling activity used to improve and enhance the service (which is why Siri is crap). No different to Google harvesting your web searches for example.
Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it.
In Alexa's privacy settings, the company gives users the option of disabling the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features.
That article clearly states that they review recordings even if that setting is turned off.
In Alexa's privacy settings, Amazon gives users the option of disabling the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features. The company says people who opt out of that program might still have their recordings analyzed by hand over the regular course of the review process.
What a surprise.
"Rogue engineers".
well its a good thing i dont have one….
At least this way I'm not talking to myself all the time, although sometimes I wish the conversation was a little less one sided.
Dont have one for this reason.
How these companies that share info with who ever wants, Convinced millions of people to willingly bug their own homes for them is insane.
Yeah how's that mobile phone working out for ya? You don't think that could listen either?
They would have to be wouldn't they? I mean if the phone is waiting for a 'hey google' or whatever the apple version is? I only have it turned on for safer driving so I can tell google to call whoever on the handsfree otherwise it would stay off.
According to Apple, while the device is constantly listening for the Hey Siri command, the audio data is discarded if the command isn’t detected. If it is, however, the audio from that point to the end of the command is sent to Apple servers for processing.
And yes, they also use this data to improve the service, possibly by having humans analyse commands that failed or were manually corrected by the user.
I’m not sure if Alexa and Google Assistant always discards the audio data if the trigger command isn’t detected. It’s possible they may send audio data regardless. I seem to recall a murder case where Amazon had Alexa audio data during the time of the alleged crime.
This is the trade off for having these kinds of services active. People really ought to be mindful what happens to their data, particularly with Google since they are primarily an advertising company.
I dont turn on that phone function. Another reason i dont understand these is, everyone has their phone on them all the time. And your phone can do the same thing.
The potential for invasion of privacy far outweighs the worth of this product. if you just using it for hands free recipe checking like the ad suggests
Did you guys read the article? The engineers are listening to commands that users are sending willingly, ie. when the keyword "Alexa" is used. They need to do this to work on their R&D.
It does not listen to your household 24/7, a simple look at the packets it sends would easily prove this and would have been uncovered by others ages ago.
Alexa is in a state of "passive listening" that means it continuously records and overwrites about one second of ambient sound until it hears the activation keyword. A look at the hardware would confirm this - it is using a processor with a small firmware chip that contains less than 1MB of memory. For Alexa to listen to you continuously it would have to stream continuously which is easy to detect.
It's really no different to your Android phone that is listening for the keyword "Hey Google". The article is click bait at best.
Never trusted and need this, and never will. But tbh google home must be doing the same thing
No shit! you accept this in the T&C's before you first ever use the device. Another fake news article
How do you think Bezos was busted having an affair?
But thats what it does…
There was even a news report in the USA about the privacy issues. One person even had their whole conversation broadcast to a friends phone through the Google Home. It was recording their conversation and called a friend in their phone contacts that let them hear the conversation the husband and wife were having at home with nothing pressed or done. I'd stay well clear of any devices like that! Got a free one from Telstra and it's going for sale immediately!
why does anyone think google doesn't listen? our government does it for free but you pay lol
Was this not expected?