You're a sucker if you use Alexa (or anything like it)

Geek Nasty

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Family finds out their conversations got sent to someone in their contacts list.

How an Alexa speaker recorded and shared a private conversation

People act surprised when they find out these devices are listening all the time and can "accidentally" stream conversations from your house to other people. Someone must have triggered a backdoor Amazon set up to spy on people (probably for the Feds on demand) :sas1:
 

Mensch Fontana

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why? how does it help you?, how do you use them? (serious question)
Got my garage door, ring door bell, ADT camera, bed room tv, living room tv, kitchen lights, living room lights, den lights connected to it. Plus you can link them together like a bootleg sonos to play spotify on all of them.
 

Geek Nasty

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Pretty much. These days cell phones all have always listening tech assistants built in. If that malfunctioned and sent out a conversation you wouldn't even know.

The difference is a cell phone would have to be actively set up to spy on you. A vendor would have to hack the OS (on iOS at least) to listen in on your or use some hidden government API. Alexa, “smart” TVs, etc. are passively listening. They’re always streaming your audio out to the internet.
 

winb83

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The difference is a cell phone would have to be actively set up to spy on you. A vendor would have to hack the OS (on iOS at least) to listen in on your or use some hidden government API. Alexa, “smart” TVs, etc. are passively listening. They’re always streaming your audio out to the internet.
They are always listening they aren't streaming your audio out online. The speakers only connect to the online server when the trigger word is said (or something that sounds close to the trigger word).

Just a few months ago updates had to be put out because there was a flaw on Android that allowed hackers to remotely execute code on it without the owner's permission. These phones aren't as secure as people like to pretend they are.
 

Nobu

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The difference is a cell phone would have to be actively set up to spy on you. A vendor would have to hack the OS (on iOS at least) to listen in on your or use some hidden government API. Alexa, “smart” TVs, etc. are passively listening. They’re always streaming your audio out to the internet.

Are you not aware of the 'Hey Siri' triggers on iOS and 'Hey Google' on Android? Those functions obviously require the phone to always be listening.

They are always listening they aren't streaming your audio out online. The speakers only connect to the online server when the trigger word is said (or something that sounds close to the trigger word).

Or so they claim, at least. We don't know that for sure.
 
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