Over and over again, company spokespeople have promised that they only start recording if someone says the wake word: “Alexa”.
It’s a spiel Danielle, an Alexa user from Portland, Oregon, had believed. She’d installed Echo devices and smart bulbs in every room in her house, accepting Amazon’s claims that they were not invading her privacy. But today she asked the company to investigate after an Alexa device recorded a private conversation between her and her husband and sent it to a random number in their address book without their permission.
Danielle found out her Alexa was recording when she received an alarming call from one of her husband’s colleagues saying: “Unplug your Alexa devices right now, you’re being hacked.”
She told KIRO-TV in Seattle that at first she didn’t believe the co-worker, but then she said: “You sat there talking about hardwood floors.” Danielle realised the colleague must have heard everything.
“I felt invaded,” she told KIRO-TV. “A total privacy invasion. Immediately, I said, ‘I’m never plugging that device in again because I can’t trust it.’”
An Amazon customer service representative confirmed that Danielle’s audio had been sent to the number and apologised but didn’t provide any information about why the device had been activated. A spokesperson for the company said it had “determined this was an extremely rare occurrence”.
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