Amazon Alexa's controversial paid features exposed

Isn't Amazon's Alexa a privacy stealer?  I remember reading that it's not good for security as it may monitor private conversations?  If anyone knows, please share with us.

59 minutes ago, esi said:

If anyone knows, please share with us.

There were some interesting cases where Amazon sent other people's chat transcripts to people requesting theirs.

Supposedly (since all we can really do is 'believe' Amazon 🤣 ) the echo devices only trigger when the local device recognizes the keyword 'Alexa'. That's one of the reasons (local-only limitations) you can't rename them just anything and only have a few, preset choices of keyword. Shame; I could think of a few things to call ours. I don't use the Alexa app other than for configuration (since Amazon removed the ability to do so on a PC, even a PC running an Android emulator) but imagine it would be similar in that the app must be started and hear its keyword.

Also supposedly you can switch off the microphones completely by pressing the privacy button. I've not taken one apart and tested that it actually does.

Once triggered though, anything you say is recorded and then sent, encrypted, to Amazon's servers for voice recognition, responses and actions, which are sent/streamed back to the device or to whatever app's server is required for the function (not here... all my devices are purely local except the echos themselves).

Amazon promises that those recordings it has are secure and not seen by humans... except in some cases when a human needs to review them for... some reason. You can disable the human part in the settings. Again, we're trusting Amazon here for all of that. You can see what it has on you by checking the Alexa app.

It's a great way for Amazon to gather data about their customers.

I took a while to decide to buy an echo, for privacy/security reasons. For a long time I wouldn't have one in the house. My final thought was that I'm not interesting enough (any more ) for anyone to seriously spy on me, Amazon already knows what I like from a multitude of other sources anyway, it's a really useful device here for voice control of our house, and me making a stand over privacy and not having one will have zero impact on the world.

Edit to add: I would absolutely not put it past the NSA or whatever country's TLA (FLA, in our case, although all our services have such development departments) to be able to exploit the devices to turn them into full-time bugs. I would be shocked and disappointed in certain departments if they did not have that capability. *K, if you are reading this and don't have, you know me and how to get in touch