Just unplugged Alexa

http://i.imgur.com/ZtacKhz.jpg

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Originally Posted by theGinsue

FIFY

I'm a 30+ year IT and Cyber Security guy. Because of this, Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc:

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What about the phone in your pocket?

Or the guy next to you?

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Originally Posted by Gman

I think my Macbook Pro was listening to everything going on around me. I would search for something that was just on TV or in a discussion with the wife with "What is" and the next word was amazingly precise about what was going on. Since I replaced the Macbook Pro with another Windows laptop, that doesn't happen anymore.

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Cell phones are the worst (best?) about this.

We can be having a conversation about some really obscure subject and if we decide to google something about that subject you can just barely start typing and it?s at the top of the list of suggestions. Kind of convenient but kind of creepy too.

FYI, you can go into your Alexa/Amazon app and disable human review of any recordings Alexa/Amazon makes. Pretty simple actually. Not sure what all the fuss is about regarding privacy.

We use ours extensively for controlling smart home devices and asking questions and what not. Anything that isn't set up to automatically work can be controlled via our voice. It's great and the wife who normally isn't as receptive to tech also has come to love using them on a regular basis.

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Originally Posted by Jer

FYI, you can go into your Alexa/Amazon app and disable human review of any recordings Alexa/Amazon makes. Pretty simple actually. Not sure what all the fuss is about regarding privacy.

We use ours extensively for controlling smart home devices and asking questions and what not. Anything that isn't set up to automatically work can be controlled via our voice. It's great and the wife who normally isn't as receptive to tech also has come to love using them on a regular basis.

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Well... IIRC CALEO 1994/1996 requires telecom providers to install surveillance equipment. So, unless you are VPN chaining, I doubt the NSA cares about privacy settings. And yeah, I'm aware of HTTPS. I'm also 99% sure the NSA has a backdoor to HTTPS. The prior backdoor was already discovered and patched after what, a decade?

Also to, ETA, the human review isn't the problem. It's the "big data" warehousing and AI processing that results in a high potential for things you've casually said being archived for... forever. The last thing I'm worried about is a guy on headphones chuckling and saying "heh, he made a small wiener joke".

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Originally Posted by theGinsue

FIFY

I'm a 30+ year IT and Cyber Security guy. Because of this, Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc:

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This. I try not to buy anything that listens to me. If I want it anyway for other reasons, I deactivate the listening mode (but do you really know it's deactivated?). I consider Facebook, Google, and Amazon to be the most evil corporate entities on the planet (note, I said corporate ... Hillary is still #1 overall).

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Originally Posted by Aloha_Shooter

I try not to buy anything that listens to me.

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I?ve been married long enough that I just want someone to listen to me when I speak.

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Originally Posted by ray1970

I?ve been married long enough that I just want someone to listen to me when I speak.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxUuDPNbkJk

I like have echo's, all privacy issues aside. Mostly for music and smart home stuff.

My little kids use them to check the weather every morning so they can decide what to wear. They also use them to play music.

The one by my bed announces if any of the doors or windows are opened or if there is motion outside the house in the middle of the night.

Turn lights on or off. Temp up or down. Start the truck.

I'm not going to lie, I like feeling like I'm actually living in the future that sci-fi told us we would. But I'm not looking forward to skynet going wild. That's going to suck.

Alexa has gotten worse and worse for me. I have no trust in her.

I'm better off with dumb sensors that just react to an input.

-John