Friend Heard Everything Said in Another Friend’s House Through the Amazon Alexa Device – IOTW Report

Friend Heard Everything Said in Another Friend’s House Through the Amazon Alexa Device

Amazon said this is “rare.”

Oh… “rare.”

KIRO-

Every room in her family home was wired with the Amazon devices to control her home’s heat, lights and security system.

But Danielle said two weeks ago their love for Alexa changed with an alarming phone call. “The person on the other line said, ‘unplug your Alexa devices right now,'” she said. “‘You’re being hacked.'”

That person was one of her husband’s employees, calling from Seattle.

“We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house,” she said. “At first, my husband was, like, ‘no you didn’t!’ And the (recipient of the message) said ‘You sat there talking about hardwood floors.’ And we said, ‘oh gosh, you really did hear us.'”

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43 Comments on Friend Heard Everything Said in Another Friend’s House Through the Amazon Alexa Device

  1. Seems like a cool toy when you have 10 or 20 friends over and you all sit around it in a circle making heinous and hair raising plots out loud and scheming against everything decent and cherished by fedgov.

    16
  2. People actually pay money to put listening devices in their homes. Really, really stupid.

    This, coming from a guy who puts masking tape over the camera on my PCs.

    24
  3. @PHenry — be sure to also turn off the microphone.

    I wouldn’t have one of those devices in my home if they paid me. About 20 or so years ago I began to hear my neighbor’s telephone conversations on our phone (cordless). Clear as a bell. Funny thing was only I could hear them — any person I was talking to on my phone could not and, apparently, my voice could not be heard by my neighbor. I got rid of those cordless phones.

    ~AA on Geoff C.’s laptop

    6
  4. THIS was just the prelude to Amazon facial recognition service I mentioned in an earlier thread. Orlando PF is running this, funny thing, the public wasn’t aware until a couple of days ago.
    This is one time I’m on board with the ACLU.

    7
  5. I’m a gadget geek…I buy, modify, design and build stuff, but I’ll be damned if I’ll have one of those things in my house! Honestly, whudya expect when someone puts an audio interface on a computer connected to the cloud! I’ll betcha dollars to donuts the geeks at Google and Amazon entertain themselves by listening to this stuff all the time!! It was bound to be leaked and/of hacked. Duh!
    Oh and I am the Rat Fink.
    Server glitch?

    6
  6. I bought one right when they came out. Had it plugged in for a couple of months, didn’t use it. Primary purpose was to use it as a speaker, and I got a good one so didn’t need the Amazon thing. It has been sitting in my closet for more than 2 years now. Wasted that $100.

    5
  7. @ Left Coast Dan

    It’s probably sitting there, unplugged, sucking up all the goings on in your home, ready to spill it’s guts to the next sweet talking speaker it sees.

    9
  8. Imagine that. A microphone in your home, connected to a server farm with damn near enough horsepower to be self aware, and it does something you don’t expect.

    Amazon is experimenting on the public. Bet your ass, they are mostly interested in the public reaction to this. I expect that to be minimal. Just like the public reaction that our laws don’t apply to people around washington.

    They are determining just how deep the sheep goes. And it’s far more than they even hope for.

    6
  9. I’m sitting here still trying to figure out why my family insisted that I buy a goddamn phone/camera/appcrap that bugs the living shit out of me every quarter to half hour!

    … for a meer $400 to $1,000 YOU CAN TOO!!! … step right up! don’t crowd … who’s next?

    3
  10. Anonymous – we had a Starduster and a power mic on the home base unit! Also ran a shortwave antenna between ours and the neighbors home. Good times in the 70s!

    When my kids were infants, we could often hear the neighbors across the street through our baby monitors.

    3
  11. I have stickers over my computer cameras, so anyone who is wary of these devices isn’t gonna get an argument from me.

    I will never willingly allow these devices in the house, for privacy but also because it’s ridiculous how so much touted as “convenience” just makes us f***iing lazier every generation. Great for handicapped, etc., but just to be able to say, “Alexa, turn up the heat,” instead of getting up off your ass and turning it up yourself? WTF kind of shitbag couch potatoes is society now, when this crap is actually popular?

    4
  12. if i want to find something out through the interwebs, i will duckduck it….if i want the house heated or cooled, i will punch buttons on the thermostat….if i want to talk to someone in the house, i will “get in their face” and talk to them…..if i want to buy something, i will go to the store, or i will duckduck it and get it cheap….

    alternatively, if i wanted to have my entire existence recorded by some strange unaccountable entity, i might want to get an alexa…..

    i am freaked out enough by the fact that some televisions these days are capable of monitoring my heartbeat…..FOR MY SAFETY, of course……if they can monitor my heartbeat, WHAT THE HELL ELSE are they listening to?????

    this is why i keep a stockpile of replacement parts for my old machines…..they expect me to eventually HAVE TO replace my non-intrusive appliances with their NEWER, BETTER models….the ones that are always listening and watching….

    i don’t think so…….i will do without them before i allow their eyes and ears into MY HOME……

    4
  13. but it does seem there have been a lot of people complaining that they were showing up as “anonymous” lately….obviously, the girl scouts have eaten our cookies, and left us in a cookie-deficient condition….once we replenish our cookies, we won’t have to worry about checking our iotw names…..

    ………….. 🙂

    2
  14. My girlfriend asked why I carry a gun around the house.

    I looked her dead in the eye and said, “The goddam Decepticons”.

    She laughed. I laughed. The toaster laughed. I shot the toaster.

    It was a good time.

          

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