One of many:
Posted on 06/13/2023 4:59:13 AM PDT by MtnClimber
You no longer control your home. Amazon does.
“Hey kids, be careful. If Alexa hears you say the wrong thing, nothing in the house will work anymore.”
They say that a fool and his cloud are easily parted.
We talk a lot about deplatforming, but when a single corporation doesn’t just control a site you use, but controls most of your life, everything from your doorbell to your vacuum, your music and your lightbulbs, and it decides that your politics are bad, you’ve got problems.
That’s exactly the situation that people put themselves in when they rely on Amazon or Google Home to control their smart home only to realize that they no longer control their home.
A touchy corporation that celebrates Pride Month and BLM all year round does. Beware of offending it.
A package was delivered to my house on Wednesday, May 24, and everything seemed fine. The following day, however, I found that my Echo Show had signed out, and I was unable to interact with my smart home devices…
The representative told me I should have received an email, which I indeed found in my inbox. It was from an executive at Amazon. As I dialed the number provided in the email, I half-wondered if Amazon was experiencing some issues and I was unwittingly falling into a scam.
When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked. When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my “Ring doorbell”
Brandon Jackson, a Microsoft software engineer, who is writing this is actually black.
I reviewed the footage and confirmed that no such comments had been made. Instead, the Eufy doorbell had issued an automated response: “Excuse me, can I help you?” The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message. Nevertheless, by the following day, my Amazon account was locked, and all my Echo devices were logged out.
Since everything is centralized, losing your Amazon account also kills the smart home setup meaning that everything from thermostats to lights to vacuums might not work anymore.
However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation. It seems more sensible to impose a temporary delivery restriction or purchasing ban on my account. Submitting video evidence from multiple angles right after my initial call with the executive appeared to have little impact on their decision to disable my account.
The short answer is because Amazon wields nearly unlimited power and sees no reason to compromise when cracking down. A single account provides better control and more leverage to punish anyone it doesn’t like....
Oh, I don't doubt it one bit, and on this I agree with you 100%. And that's why I said it's unavoidable now, unless you want to move to the wilderness.
One of many:
If the phone were acting as a microphone uplink you would notice a lot of battery drain. However the phone could contain enough software that it could listen to you and record then compress and send data in short bursts. What if you take a couple of hours of listening to your house then deleting all the silence then compressing the sound portion and spreading the actual content of the sound into 8 tracks and sending them simultaneously. You could probably upload several hours of voice in a couple of seconds. Siri is always listening.
To paraphrase an age-old axiom, “Good firewalls make good neighbors.”
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