The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread

Don’t know how much more of an issue the change is over just having an Alexa powered device in your home at all but Amazon’s history around this stuff isn’t good.

Further, Amazon has previously mismanaged Alexa voice recordings. In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in civil penalties over the revelation that it stored recordings of children’s interactions with Alexa forever. Adults also didn’t feel properly informed of Amazon’s inclination toward keeping Alexa recordings unless prompted not to until 2019—five years after the first Echo came out.

If that’s not enough to deter you from sharing voice recordings with Amazon, note that the company allowed employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings. In 2019, Bloomberg reported that Amazon employees listened to as many as 1,000 audio samples during their nine-hour shifts. Amazon says it allows employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings to train its speech recognition and natural language understanding systems.

Other reasons why people may be hesitant to trust Amazon with personal voice samples include the previous usage of Alexa voice recordings in criminal trials and Amazon paying a settlement in 2023 in relation to allegations that it allowed “thousands of employees and contractors to watch video recordings of customers’ private spaces” taken from Ring cameras, per the Federal Trade Commission.

Kilemall

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28

Don’t know how much more of an issue the change is over just having an Alexa powered device in your home at all but Amazon’s history around this stuff isn’t good.

Further, Amazon has previously mismanaged Alexa voice recordings. In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in civil penalties over the revelation that it stored recordings of children’s interactions with Alexa forever. Adults also didn’t feel properly informed of Amazon’s inclination toward keeping Alexa recordings unless prompted not to until 2019—five years after the first Echo came out.

If that’s not enough to deter you from sharing voice recordings with Amazon, note that the company allowed employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings. In 2019, Bloomberg reported that Amazon employees listened to as many as 1,000 audio samples during their nine-hour shifts. Amazon says it allows employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings to train its speech recognition and natural language understanding systems.

Other reasons why people may be hesitant to trust Amazon with personal voice samples include the previous usage of Alexa voice recordings in criminal trials and Amazon paying a settlement in 2023 in relation to allegations that it allowed “thousands of employees and contractors to watch video recordings of customers’ private spaces” taken from Ring cameras, per the Federal Trade Commission.

Of course they are. My assumption is that they have both government contracts to listen and cull for LE and national security items, and also corporate studies of customers and possibly job vetting process.

Now from the moment we got phones in our houses, they could always turn the mics on. With cell phones they can track where we go. It’s inherent in the tech.

That being said, no one in my family has the demon beasts in their house. Much less the madness of cameras in the house.

Gustaf

I assume Google is the same. They’ll be fascinated by us asking what the weather is 4 times every morning and twice at night.

@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

I assume Google is the same. They’ll be fascinated by us asking what the weather is 4 times every morning and twice at night.

I think the issue is that your mics are always on waiting for “Hey Google” or whatever the voice command is. How much of that stuff they send to their servers is probably the question. I’m guessing it varies by situation and, depending on the country, by government request.

They got pulled up once for allowing some third party advertising company to access stuff but I don’t know the details

Edit: first story I could find about it below but, being NY Post it is probably sensationalized.

Marketing firm admits using your own phone to listen in on your...

Gustaf

I am secure in the knowledge that I am boring AF.

@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

I am secure in the knowledge that I am boring AF.

Yep. No doubt about that.

oyaji

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That being said, no one in my family has the demon beasts in their house. Much less the madness of cameras in the house.

And people laugh at me for wanting to live without a phone, internet, or computer, and instead relying only on the US Post.

If someone wants to talk to me they can send me a letter and wait for an appointment for me to meet them down at the gate.

Gustaf

@oyaji said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That being said, no one in my family has the demon beasts in their house. Much less the madness of cameras in the house.

If someone wants to talk to me they can send me a letter and wait for an appointment for me to meet them down at the gate.

It’s the first part of this sentence that’s utter fantasy

oyaji

@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@oyaji said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

That being said, no one in my family has the demon beasts in their house. Much less the madness of cameras in the house.

If someone wants to talk to me they can send me a letter and wait for an appointment for me to meet them down at the gate.

It’s the first part of this sentence that’s utter fantasy

I wish.

If I knew the reven00ers would stay away, I could fire up some hootch without a worry.

Well, that’s enough internet for today.

Blanks

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

Well, that’s enough internet for today.

Sometimes there are things I read on the internet that leave me breathing a big sigh and shaking my head. This is one of those times.

For all of our modern tech wonders, there’s one thing I’m finding to be a PITA nearly every day recently and that is using my bluetooth headset with multiple devices (i.e., my phone, laptop, TV, Switch). I’ll go sit in the lounge and want to watch something on the TV or play some Switch without disturbing anyone else and invariably I’ll find that my headset won’t connect because it’s still connected to a different device. Then I have to schlep my lazy ass into the office like a 15th century peasant to disable the connection on my laptop and go back to the lounge and try again. It happens at least daily.

I don’t know how you’d fix it but I’m kind of shocked it’s this much of a PITA. I can’t imagine Apple users being able to cope with something so complicated so I’m wondering how Apple devices handle it?

Jam

@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:

For all of our modern tech wonders, there’s one thing I’m finding to be a PITA nearly every day recently and that is using my bluetooth headset with multiple devices (i.e., my phone, laptop, TV, Switch). I’ll go sit in the lounge and want to watch something on the TV or play some Switch without disturbing anyone else and invariably I’ll find that my headset won’t connect because it’s still connected to a different device. Then I have to schlep my lazy ass into the office like a 15th century peasant to disable the connection on my laptop and go back to the lounge and try again. It happens at least daily.

I don’t know how you’d fix it but I’m kind of shocked it’s this much of a PITA. I can’t imagine Apple users being able to cope with something so complicated so I’m wondering how Apple devices handle it?

Some days, I park my truck and go into the house or office and try and dictate a text into my iPhone only to realize that the microphone is still in the truck for the next several minutes. ;-)