Posted on 12/20/2018 7:21:16 AM PST by Bloody Sam Roberts
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A user of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant in Germany got access to more than a thousand recordings from another user because of “a human error” by the company.
The customer had asked to listen back to recordings of his own activities made by Alexa but he was also able to access 1,700 audio files from a stranger when Amazon sent him a link, German trade publication c’t reported.
“This unfortunate case was the result of a human error and an isolated single case,” an Amazon spokesman said on Thursday.
The first customer had initially got no reply when he told Amazon about the access to the other recordings, the report said. The files were then deleted from the link provided by Amazon but he had already downloaded them on to his computer, added the report from c’t, part of German tech publisher Heise.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Now, the cat is out of the bag that all the government has to do is send one of those secret warrants to Amazon or Google, and the ferals will have a listening device in your home 24/7. It's bad enough with cellphones. This is crap, yet people fall for it over and over again.
#21 and all the aluminum foil you have are really transmitting your thoughts and not blocking them.
My Stapler? Wow!
And here we used to laugh at the devices on Get Smart, Mannix or Mission Impossible.
These messages are not stored on the device itself. Oh, no, they are stored on the Cloud and just played back through the device. The dumber the device the better. Device processing power is used for Digital/Analog Conversion and Communications. Good Digital/Analog Conversion is not cheap.
I’d be willing to bet money that the Cloud does all the voice recognition except the ‘Alexia’ part. The device just buffers the message, passes it up to the Cloud where the real horsepower resides. How else could they get someone else’s messages? That’s how I’d do it anyway.
Very discouraging. I wish that my own father had spoken of his war experiences, so they could have been passed on to MY children, to give them a sense of the sacrifice and patriotism of the troops, but he never mentioned them. My children adored him, and I know they would have benefited from having that knowledge.
They’re working the bugs out. Pretty soon they’ll be able to eavesdrop in total secrecy.
that is exactly how those gizmos work.
They record your command and send it to a processing server that sends back the reply.
“
People who volunteer their DNA and happily put listening devices in their home baffle me.
I have no social media accounts and enjoy all the data breaches I read about.”
But you posted on F.R. ...
You’re totally right, all it knows how to do is hear ‘alexa’ and then sent the following words to the cloud.
How long will be be before the government requires such devices in every home? (in the name of fighting terrorism)
I wonder if you can configure it to respond to something else. I could come up with a few choice names.
Problem is most of the really choice names are already in use at my house.
You can make it respond to ‘echo’. Just those two.
That's probably why I don't make the big bucks, because I'd design it to answer to anything that comes to mind.
Like, Hey Jeff, or Hey A$$hole.
With those fixed names your Amazon Surveillance System(ASS) can be triggered remotely any time.
I do love mine, I have it hooked up to my lighting and can turn the lights off in groups or individually. I don’t say ‘alexia, how do I get away with terrorist activity’, so I’m not worried. It doesn’t send the lighting commands to the cloud, I’ve proven it sends it just to my hub for the lights.
I know you like it, it told me.
anonymously
“...Very discouraging....”
Don’t be discouraged.
That’s why YOU’RE here. Pick up the torch and lead.
That’s why ALL of us are here, now.
+++++
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