this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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they quite literally are recording constantly. how else can they detect the trigger phrase? they only difference is that they are supposed to delete these recordings after the phrase isnt heard. but who's to say that one of these devices is really doing that? it could include these recordings in it's next request to amazon's headquarters.
regardless of what your phone does, having 2 recording devices is worse than 1. especially if they are owned by 2 separate companies. but if u disagree, why dont u livestream your computer screen 24/7, since microsoft is already recording that anyway...whats the difference?
every new internet-enabled microcomputer is another attack vector, and every less one is more peace of mind. there's a reason most security-minded people dont live in the bush, every choice is a compromise, and i choose somewhere between being able living in society and having a recording device in every room.
also, you should consider using a free and open source mobile os if youre not already...
Imagine you look at every frame of a video. Are you capable of detecting if one of the frames of video has a bird in it without saving anything? Of course you are. That's how Alexa works. Stop falsely claiming it does anything else without proof. I'm all for criticizing Amazon but do it for legitimate things. We don't need to resort to fear mongering and lies to take them down. There's plenty of valid shit to accuse them of.
Because people analyze the network traffic.
This is just goofy at this point. I'm not trying to convince you personally to put an Alexa in your house. I'm just saying that it's a miniscule marginal amount of extra privacy loss at worst. It shouldn't surprise you people are interested.
I'm claiming it could, and that there is an incentive. for the same reasons that people use open source software.
then do your part to accuse them of those things instead of defending them here.
did you read my reply ? it could store the recordings and bundle them with an innocent request, encrypted even. unless you have physically looked inside the device and checked that it is incapable of doing this, you are simply trusting a company's word.
and...I'm not trying to convince you personally either. that statement is pointless. we are having a "discussion". my opinion is that people should care more about these issues, especially when you see things like the original post.
I don't see how saying they're a bad company worthy of criticism isn't "doing my part to accuse them" lmao.
what criticism do they deserve ? youre not making any actual statements
Don't turn this into a purity test. Amazon is a bad company worthy of criticism.
Plenty of people have done just that; And discovered that no, Echo devices do not do that. Also audio recordings are big, so the folks who have done proper network analysis would probably have noticed such a thing.
Echo devices have two computers in them: One that only listens for the wake word and activates the second computer. A second computer that does the actual relay and processing for the voice commands.
Claiming they're always recording is just unnecessary fearmongering
I guess that depends on your definition of recording? An onboard microprocessor waiting for a trigger word is not storing or transmitting anything while waiting and that’s acceptable to me.
like i said, are you confident it's not storing or transmitting anything ?
You realize it's trivial to isolate and monitor traffic for a device on your network, right? Like this isn't magic, we have the tools to check whether or not it's physically possible for these devices to be exfiltrating 24h of audio a day based on the bandwidth they consume, and the variability in the transmitted data. There are free, fully sufficient tools to do this at literally every level of your home network, if these devices were actually recording all the time people would be noticing it and reporting on it.
they can encrypt the data and bundle it with other requests. regardless, is it really easier to 24/7 monitor your web traffic than to just use a computer/phone instead of a voice assistant ?
Encrypted doesn't mean magically violating the laws of physics, data uses bandwidth. There's no reason for these devices to be using the amount of bandwidth it would take to make what you're implying even close to feasible.
text transcriptions take up barely any bandwith, i guarantee u wouldnt notice it
Yes because security researchers and hobbyists would never compare an isolated device to one plugged in next to a TV or in a crowded room, there just isn't any data to support that anything like that is happening. As many other commenters have said, these devices are less complex than a cell phone and most people have no issues carrying one of those around. If one of your devices was "tapped" it would be that one.
Most text transcript services are too complex to run on the tiny little processor in these devices. They would be sending audio or nothing at all
good point