The Great Hack

With Amazon Alexa, at least you can review and delete the voice history it has recorded from your device. It can be enlightening to review it: in my case (apart from a couple of rather odd and curious misinterpretations), it’s all been quite boring, banal and innocuous.
So in reality… no real problem.

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Thus demonstrating a failure to grasp how data retention works. You’ve deleted it off your device. Wooh! It means literally nothing.

I can delete my travel history from the Trainline app. Delete the app and reinstall. Whole history comes back. Friend of mine wiped their Alexa history. Restored from server 8 weeks later without prompting. Still confident it’s simple?

This is exactly why people need to watch The Great Hack and then read deeper.

Oh dear, assumptions…

1 I didn’t say I’d deleted it.
2 As of 6 months ago Amazon now delete data stored on their servers not just on the device.

You’re asking us to do the research - please reciprocate.

I was using “you” in the wider sense.

As of about 12 weeks ago my friend took steps to wipe their history having researched and been assured Amazon delete from their servers also. Back came the whole thing about 4 weeks ago. She researched online and has found hundreds with the same issue. Better still are those people with an Alexa reciting back those recordings. Imagine that in the middle of the night.

So yeah, fully reciprocated thanks,

Curious, what are we supposed to imagine happens in the middle of the night with our Alexa?

You’re not supposed to imagine anything. There are clear reports of Alexa waking and broadcasting previous recordings. Magnificent.

As someone with a sight-impairment there are a number of circumstances I would welcome such technology but it’s not really fit for purpose and if we accept algorithms with built in prejudice and incompetence then we get the world we deserve I guess.

You’ll know when you start seeing targeted ads for snoring remedies.

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Love to know how, unless hacked. I have never had that happen with my Mercedes, BMW, Cortana, Siri, phone or anything else that uses a target and hosted verification utterance system… which quite frankly has been in common use for years.
Your Alexa needs to wake, process an utterance and then playout a skill… but yes if surreptitiously one accessed your house in the night where your Alexa was , activated your Alexa and then played a rogue or malware skill (Alexa app) that happened to be in your profile I could see this conceivably happening,
I suppose in the limit, due to lightning, heavy static electricity, heavy noise burst on mains, RFI, (or even some sort of EMP) etc, your Alexa computer processor might crash and wake itself… but even then it would need to process an utterance for it to run an app.

You have been talking Mrs SinS haven’t you?

Here’s an interesting take.

Interesting read, of course it’s always good to get opposite opinions. What’s the point searching out opinions that agree with your own beliefs.

Interesting response. As a point of principle I regularly read stuff which doesn’t share my perspective in order to broaden my understanding.

As I said to my nephew when he started sending me links about immigration, it’s possible to find hundreds of articles that support the idea that the world is flat on the internet.

Steady on Bob, the earth really is flat…or so JV & Ivor used to tell us :smiley:

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Another thumbs up for facial recognition then.

Don’t forget that face recognition technology was given to us by aliens from Kepler-442b who want to take over the earth due to the higher radiance level of our sun; the paranoia it induces is part of their plan to disrupt our society as a prelude to their invasion.

Now where did I put my tinfoil hat?

Looks quite a good system… I think I might look into getting one…not sure of the £2.50 a month ‘cloud’ storage service however,… would prefer to use my own… but I guess that’s how they make it work commercially.