What Amazon Echo and Google Home Do With Your Voice Data

DooKey

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 25, 2001
Messages
13,552
In case you're worried about what your Echo or Google Home save when you talk to it, you should check out this story that lays out how to delete your recorded commands. However, I'm not sure we'll ever get to delete everything they hear, but it is nice to be able to delete some of your more embarrassing 'requests'. Continue to watch what you say around these little spies.

After you say your wake word, though, your Alexa and Google Assistant do start recording, and then whisk those clips away to the cloud. The hardware itself is pretty dumb.
 
DrBorg said:
I cannot understand why someone would want this in their home.

Corporations actually Selling Big Brother to you, for a fee. :)

Amazing.
Click to expand...

I have to admit, I had a temporary lapse in judgement and bought an Echo Dot (it was dirt-cheap) with a smart plug for my wife. It allowed her to turn a light off in the baby's room while carrying our little guy. It was very convenient at a time when we were both rather sleep-deprived with a young baby. A week or so after, I started watching the creepy little directional LEDs on top follow our voices around and suddenly realized what I had bought. I promptly unplugged it, deleted all of the data from Amazon's servers (though, did I really...?), and will never, EVER buy anything like it again. Still frustrated with myself that I gave in to the marketing... Convenience will be the death of us, I swear.
 
We just ordered two Echo Dots with the smart plugs. I don't get all the data mining hoopla. Yes convenience has a price I suppose. But already with the targeted advertisements, google accounts, and smartphones we have, that already record all we do anyway....what is the difference of having one more data collection device in our home?
 
I use mine to control my house lights and music through home assistant, should I be worried?
 
Someone should try to do some illicit activies meeting and planning while sitting next to a Google Home or Amazon Echo and see if the FBI ends up showing.
 
Web4Life said:
Someone should try to do some illicit activies meeting and planning while sitting next to a Google Home or Amazon Echo and see if the FBI ends up showing.
Click to expand...
Someone did murder someone else in front of one. One supoena later.... They retain a lot. That said, I have a couple around the house mostly for the kids to be able to ask it questios and for me to be lazy. Amazon already knows 90% of what I buy and Google has every text or call I've ever made stored somewhere. I don't have much to give up in terms of privacy.
 
DrBorg said:
I cannot understand why someone would want this in their home.

Corporations actually Selling Big Brother to you, for a fee. :)

Amazing.
Click to expand...
Do you use google or shop on amazon? If so, then you already have big brother in your home.

These devices don't actually send anything until you give the command. It's no different than typing the same thing into google.com and awaiting the answer.

My worry is less about the corporations running them and more about the criminals that can break into their systems. These devices are designed to take commands too. Someone nefarious could steal your recordings, start ordering stuff on your account, play with your lights, etc. It's a bit more than I would want controlled remotely.
 
SticKx911 said:
Someone did murder someone else in front of one. One supoena later.... They retain a lot. That said, I have a couple around the house mostly for the kids to be able to ask it questios and for me to be lazy. Amazon already knows 90% of what I buy and Google has every text or call I've ever made stored somewhere. I don't have much to give up in terms of privacy.
Click to expand...
See, I keep hearing this case cited, but have yet to hear what they gleaned from the device itself.

All evidence suggests that police got little evidence relevant to the case. If these things only start recording when you say "Alexa" or "OK Google" then the likelihood of the killer saying "Alexa, What's the best way to stab someone?" right before the event happened is very low. If the owner was asking dumbass questions like that in the days leading up to it, well.... that's just stupid criminal stuff they would have found anyways. It's not like that method of getting search history is any different from the past 20 years.

If someone can point out otherwise, I would love to know. :)
 
Last edited:
I use Google services and I use Amazon/Alexa (mainly just for weather updates and alarms). But the thing is I don't get any ads or emails from them. No targeted stuff. Never have in the 12 years I've been using them.

Dunno what they are doing with 'all my data' but it seems I'm of little interest to them. Strange as I spend probably £8000 a year with Amazon.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Do you use google or shop on amazon? If so, then you already have big brother in your home.

These devices don't actually send anything until you give the command. It's no different than typing the same thing into google.com and awaiting the answer.

My worry is less about the corporations running them and more about the criminals that can break into their systems. These devices are designed to take commands too. Someone nefarious could steal your recordings, start ordering stuff on your account, play with your lights, etc. It's a bit more than I would want controlled remotely.
Click to expand...

I completely agree about online things, but apart from my comcast smart tv remote, none of them are actively listening to me.

The remote control is listening to a loop of the Dr. King Dream speech, recorded into a chip, ever since I talked about Krystals hamburgers and got ads for the next three days. :)

The telephone charging 'station' hears a loop of Johnny Reb music just in case, also recorded into a chip.

Google thinks I'm an elderly woman who like building Drag Racing cars, and amazon haz no clue what to recommend, so it just shows stuff I've already bought.

Oh, and making a game out of typing things into the autocomplete google box is something we do with friends; we see who can come up with the most creative way to off someone, while looking at only the autocomplete searches.
:)

"Yes your honor, we did search google for 'How to kill a narcissist asshole with a sawzall and feed him to guests' on google; there were several of us there, and we were not thinking of a particular individual. That we mentioned, anyway."
 
these devices have to be listening and sending the voice / audio back home 24x7. Otherwise how could they know if they are to start doing anything or not.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top