Thread: Be Mindfull - Amazon's Alexa is listening and learning

Why are people surprised that devices explicitly designed to listen and record are listening and recording?

Devices only record when a "wake word", like "Alexa", are spoken..

Fcuk!! That's the last time that I ask my GF Alexa to suck my dick .....

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

Indeed a concern,

I disagree. I think it's of no concern at all and entirely as Amazon says.
It's not as if there's a tie with the identity of whoever addressed Alexa, and even if there was, the recordings are of commands, not personal information.

Someone may be concerned if his commands to Alexa were tied to his identity AND his commands were depraved or illegal stuff like, "Alexa, how to make a bomb?" or "Alexa, where is kiddy porn found?".
I think this article is a beat-up.
But I'm biased. I love Alexa and encourage improvements to her abilities

Originally Posted by Maanaam

I disagree. I think it's of no concern at all and entirely as Amazon says.
It's not as if there's a tie with the identity of whoever addressed Alexa, and even if there was, the recordings are of commands, not personal information.

Someone may be concerned if his commands to Alexa were tied to his identity AND his commands were depraved or illegal stuff like, "Alexa, how to make a bomb?" or "Alexa, where is kiddy porn found?".
I think this article is a beat-up.
But I'm biased. I love Alexa and encourage improvements to her abilities

News media love to play up the privacy angle. Kind of hypocritical when you consider how intrusive some of them are but it plays well to a segment of their audience.

I've never used Alexa, I've never asked Google anything using a voice command and when I last bought a new Samsung phone, the first thing I did was disable the Bixby voice command function.

^ Hey Google, open notes add butter to grocery list.

Check out the doc linked below. Not recommended for the paranoid.


https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.02741.pdf - "Peek-a-Boo: I see your smart home activities, even encrypted!"

Abstract—A myriad of IoT devices such as bulbs, switches,speakers in a smart home environment allow users to easily control the physical world around them and facilitate their living styles. However, an attacker inside or near a smarthome environment can potentially exploit the innate wireless medium used by these devices to exfiltrate sensitive information about the users and their activities, invading user privacy. With this in mind, in this work, we introduce a novel multi-stage privacy attack against user privacy in a smart environment. It is realized utilizing state-of-the-art machine-learning approaches for detecting and identifying particular types of IoT devices,their actions, states, and ongoing user activities in a cascading style by only observing passively the wireless traffic from smarthome devices. The attack effectively works on both encrypted and unencrypted communications.

We evaluate the efficiencyof the attack with real measurements from an extensive setof popular off-the-shelf smart home IoT devices utilizing a setof diverse network protocols like WiFi, ZigBee, and BLE. Ourresults show that an adversary passively sniffing the networktraffic can achieve very high accuracy (above 90%) in identifyingthe state and actions of targeted smart home devices andtheir users. In contrast to earlier straightforward approaches,our multi-stage privacy attack can perform activity detectionand identification automatically, without extensive backgroundknowledge or specifications of analyzed protocols. This allowsan adversary to efficiently aggregate extensive behavior profilesof targeted users.

To protect against this privacy leakage, wealso propose a countermeasure based on generating spoofednetwork traffic to hide the real activities of the devices. We alsodemonstrate that the provided solution provides better protectionthan existing solutions.

I bet half of those who declare this an outrage probably don't even know what their router is doing.

Security is a two way street.

For a start, Google devices have a "Mic Off" button.

Call me a Neanderthal , but I'll have none of that in my home.

Not that they would hear much over the farting and a burping noises

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

The worst that could happen if my system was hacked, would be that someone could turn my lights on and off, make me listen to disco, or watch Fox news.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

I like Alexa because it gives me a central place to control everything

Yeah, she's very cool. When I was staying with my mate last year in NZ, I would call out, "Alexa, add to shopping list, rum." My mate would get the shopping list updated to his phone. And it is always good to be sitting having a few quiet ones and be able to simply call out, "Alexa, play Ben Harper", and Ben Harper starts singing. Order pizza or an Uber, get the weather, so many little helpful devices.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

Resistance if futile, the technology is the future.

Yep. There's no marking time: go forward or be left behind.

Originally Posted by Maanaam

Yep. There's no marking time: go forward or be left behind.

Indeed my friend, "Go Forward or be left behind" going forward can be scary "there be monsters there" but opportunity also.
So much to unpack in your simple quote!! I have being thinking about it for an Hour now.It is amazing how much can be packed in ten words. One truth remains. forward is the only direction available.

Sorry TD wont allow me to give you another green rep.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

The worst that could happen if my system was hacked, would be that someone could turn my lights on and off, make me listen to disco, or watch Fox news.

No, the worst thing that could happen is your two dogs get poisoned and you get hogtied, arse raped, burgled and murdered by hackers having viewed your logged indoor activity and habits.

Just saying like

Originally Posted by Dillinger

No, the worst thing that could happen is your two dogs get poisoned and you get hogtied, arse raped, burgled and murdered by hackers having viewed your logged indoor activity and habits.

Just saying like

Indeed "there be monsters there" the question is would they stop you from going there?
I get it!
Make love not war but be prepared for both. I agree!

Balance

I had an Amazon Echo but everything was set to England, ie if you asked it the time it would give you the English time. I had it working with Spotify but gave it away in the end after feeling like a dick talking to a speaker.

Originally Posted by Dillinger

I had an Amazon Echo but everything was set to England, ie if you asked it the time it would give you the English time. I had it working with Spotify but gave it away in the end after feeling like a dick talking to a speaker.

you don't mind typing in a computer, what is the difference ? Simply different modes of communication.

Productivity

^ So what have you asked Alexa today then, whilst sat there gaining weight?

Originally Posted by Dillinger

I had it working with Spotify but gave it away in the end after feeling like a dick talking to a speaker.

Really? I think talking to a speaker and it immediately responding with the music list you want is great. Beats standing up and putting on a CD, beats buying the CD. Spotify is great, and Alexa is a wonderful servant organising and playing it for you.

Yesterday I used the a/c remote control to change the temperature in the bedroom, I turned on and off several lights by hand, I manually switched on the kettle and made myself a cup of tea, I used my finger to click on my mouse to play a Youtube video and listen to some music, and I cogitated if it was 2 decades or 3 decades since I last bought butter. It was all really easy. Call me old school if you like, but I really don't need Alexa or the like. Fuck 'em. Each to their own, though. Perhaps when I am old and infirm I will reconsider.

Originally Posted by Neverna

Yesterday I used the a/c remote control to change the temperature in the bedroom, I turned on and off several lights by hand, I manually switched on the kettle and made myself a cup of tea, I used my finger to click on my mouse to play a Youtube video and listen to some music, and I cogitated if it was 2 decades or 3 decades since I last bought butter. It was all really easy. Call me old school if you like, but I really don't need Alexa or the like. Fuck 'em. Each to their own, though. Perhaps when I am old and infirm I will reconsider.

Yes but did you adjust the temperature in your house from from work before you got there? or turn the lights on from the other side of the world? Did you ask the man at the door of your Thai home what he want? from 8,478 mi away (distance from NY to Khon Kaen) ? and he though you were asking from inside the house. Did you check to see what your dogs were doing from the other side of the world?

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

Yes but did you adjust the temperature in your house from from work before you got there?

No. I turn the bedrom a/c on 10 minutes before going to bed, usually before I take a shower.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

or turn the lights on from the other side of the world?

55 No. The light switch is a metre away from where I am sitting. I don't need to go the other side of the world just to turn on a light when that light switch is so close to me.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

Did you ask the man at the door of your Thai home what he want?

Nobody came yesterday or today but if someone comes tomorrow while I'm at home, I'll be able to ask him in person.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

Did you check to see what your dogs were doing from the other side of the world?

I don't have any dogs and I will never get any.

Alexa obviously works for you, BB, but there is no need for it in my life. As I posted earlier, the future may be different.

Originally Posted by Neverna

No. I turn the bedrom a/c on 10 minutes before going to bed, usually before I take a shower.


55 No. The light switch is a metre away from where I am sitting. I don't need to go the other side of the world just to turn on a light when that light switch is so close to me.


Nobody came yesterday or today but if someone comes tomorrow while I'm at home, I'll be able to ask him in person.


I don't have any dogs and I will never get any.

Alexa obviously works for you, BB, but there is no need for it in my life. As I posted earlier, the future may be different.

It was a rhetorical question to make a point, I realise Alexa is just a tool, and like any other tool it is not always needed by everybody. My original involvement in this thread was to make the point that Alexa is so widely used that the reported problems are statistically insignificant so far . and as a user provide an insider view. By no means am I advocating its use by everybody. For me , in my present situation it is very helpful.
By the way Alexa is not the only smart speaker system out there, Google Home is another .
An Echo dot is very inexpensive you can buy one for $ 30 ,perhaps less when on sale. If you have a prime account just the music aspect of it is worth it. plop your ass on a lawn chair, grab a Leo and ask "Alexa Play Neil Young"
I can't wait until they have alexa enabled Lawn mowers LOL

Originally Posted by Dillinger

^ So what have you asked Alexa today then, whilst sat there gaining weight?

What a third of a cup is in fl oz.

Handy for temperature conversions, too.

And playing a bit of music while you're cooking.