http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5769235/Privacy-fears-woman-says-Echo-device-recorded-sent-private-conversation.html

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Privacy fears after woman says Alexa recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random contact

  • Portland woman discovered her Alexa recorded and sent a private conversation
  • It was only until a contact let her know that she became aware of the flaw
  • Amazon says it’s aware of the issue and in the process of releasing a fix
  • Issue raised the ire of privacy advocates who worry Alexa is spying on its users

Be careful of what you say around your Echo devices.

A Portland woman was shocked to discover that Echo recorded and sent audio of a private conversation to one of their contacts without their knowledge, according to KIRO 7.

The woman, who is only identified as Danielle, said her family had installed the popular voice-activated speakers throughout their home.

It wasn’t until a random contact called to let them know that he’d received a call from Alexa that they realized their device had mistakenly tra

As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely’, they added.

Amazon offered to ‘de-provision’ the communication features of the woman’s Echo device so that she could continue using the smart home features.

But she said she’d much rather get a refund and says she’s dumped all her Alexa devices from her home.

‘A husband and wife in the privacy of their home have conversations that they’re not expecting to be sent to someone [in] their address book,’ she told KIRO.

A number of privacy concerns have been raised in recent months around Amazon’s Alexa-enabled speakers.

A Portland woman was shocked to discover that Echo recorded and sent audio of a private conversation to one of their contacts without their knowledge

The contact, who was one of her husband’s work employees, told the woman to ‘unplug your Alexa devices right now. You’re being hacked’, KIRO noted.

‘We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house,’ Danielle said.

‘…I felt invaded. Immediately I said, “I’m never plugging that device in again, because I can’t trust it”‘, she added.

Thankfully, the recorded conversation was only about hardware floors, but the incident has still managed to spark fears of Alexa spying on its users.

 

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