Breaking news: Water is wet, study finds

[ApK]

I'm with DD both philosophically and practically here.
And I think the thread title is pretty close to the mark.

I would be more concerned if someone proved that the devices were listening and collecting data NOT during an interaction, but when they were supposedly "off." I do use physical shutters on my webcams and physical disconnects on my mics when possible. That's about the extent of my privacy paranoia for the stuff I use. Where I have other concerns, I just don't use that stuff.

I did find one part of the article amusing: Amazon's response to the study was basically "Wrong! It's not 30 times higher ad bids...more like 28.5 or so....

[Victoria]

I must admit that I love the convenience of my smart speakers, and I really enjoy streaming Amazon music. I assume they analyze my voice requests for marketing purposes. I realize Amazon could also eavesdrop, but I’m not particularly worried about it. I doubt they do, but if anyone did listen in, they’d quickly move on to something more interesting.

The internet is everywhere. I think every person has to choose who they’re going to dance with. I’m comfortable with Amazon’s agenda - it just wants to get better at selling me things. That already happens every time I use a search engine, or place an online order somewhere. But I’m not naïve, and I protect my privacy. That’s why I’ve never joined Facebook or Twitter, etc.

Unfortunately, many serious breaches are beyond our personal control. A few years ago, a bank notified me that they’d ‘misplaced’ a digital device with thousands of customers’ info on it, including mine. Then, two years later a car company notified me of a similar breach. The province next door had it’s healthcare system hijacked for ransom. It’s very common - the horses have left the barn. So though I’m not worried about Amazon, I do worry about state sponsored / bad actors penetrating our data systems, compromising critical infrastructures, ransom-wear, etc. I also worry about deliberate disinformation campaigns. Collectively, we really are quite vulnerable.

[Dr. Drib]

All right! Who stole my popcorn?

Was it you?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

All right! Who stole my popcorn?

Was it you?

Next time, get extra butter

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ApK

I'm with DD both philosophically and practically here.
And I think the thread title is pretty close to the mark.

I would be more concerned if someone proved that the devices were listening and collecting data NOT during an interaction, but when they were supposedly "off."

Does the following count as "collecting data NOT during an interaction"?

https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-alex...rivacy-1452173

I do use physical shutters on my webcams and physical disconnects on my mics when possible. That's about the extent of my privacy paranoia for the stuff I use. Where I have other concerns, I just don't use that stuff.

I did find one part of the article amusing: Amazon's response to the study was basically "Wrong! It's not 30 times higher ad bids...more like 28.5 or so....

[ApK]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Does the following count as "collecting data NOT during an interaction"?

https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-alex...rivacy-1452173

Not necessarily, the actual claim they are reporting on, if true at all, could be audio that very well may have been triggered by a wake word. They don't say. If so, it would count as an interaction, even if it may have been accidental. And in any case, it doesn't count as "proof." It's just someone reporting someone else's claim.

There is a quote in there from a guy who says there's "lots of evidence" that some devices ("the broader market") record without a wake word being spoken, but no specifics are given, and he's not seemingly talking about Alexa, or the audio in the main claim. For all I know, the juxtaposition of that quote with the actual claim of the article may just be intentionally sowing FUD.

While it's a possibility, I tend to think, given the popularity of Alexa, and the number of hacktivists who can use tools like Wireshark, that if Alexa was sending home audio when she wasn't supposed to, it would be well publicized by now.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

No. You really can't. But that's a different argument.


Your decision to care threatens to impose a loss of convenience for me. Is it any wonder why people like me keep trying to persuade others why your concerns aren't that relevant?

No one's on the side of the angels, here.

I think you are confusing privacy with security. They are related but not the same thing. In most instances all that is required to improve privacy is to NOT collect the data in the first place, or to collect it at a higher level. (eg: Almost no one needs to know my actual date of birth, for marketing purposes my age bracket is quite sufficient. The list goes on.)

But it's true that the decision to care would likely cost something - not convenience, probably actual dollars. If companies get less data to profit from then they are going to want some other compensation. But if everyone cared that cost per individual would likely be nominal.

[SteveEisenberg]

I'm, I think, with DiapDealer on this. If someone at Google wants to spend their lunchtime laughing about my musical taste (includes barbershop quartets), go ahead.

As for the thread title, that's so 20th century. Lately there are a boatload of studies on water that will never float anything:

Effect of Hydrate Shell Formation on the Stability of Dry Water

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ApK

I would be more concerned if someone proved that the devices were listening and collecting data NOT during an interaction, but when they were supposedly "off."

It's only anecdotal, but I have Google speakers all over the house (I have six) and I find Google displaying ads and articles related to stuff that I was talking about, but not talking to the speakers about.

I love the convenience of the speakers and it's part of the bargain. But any argument that Google isn't listening to all conversations in range and using them for marketing is absolute bullshit.

And I'm a Google fan. Aside from my six speakers, I have a Pixel phone and my phone company is Google-Fi, so I'm not trying to smear them.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Effect of Hydrate Shell Formation on the Stability of Dry Water

"I bought a box of instant water, but I don't know what to add." - Steven Wright.


That there is what you call 'dry humor.'

[ApK]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

It's only anecdotal, but I have Google speakers all over the house (I have six) and I find Google displaying ads and articles related to stuff that I was talking about, but not talking to the speakers about.

My wife often remarks about the same thing. But since we have Amazon devices, and given their sometimes hostile competition, I doubt Alexa is that well integrated with Google's ads, so I'm guessing it's coincidence or whatever that effect is that makes you notice more of certain model of car on the road right after you get that model yourself.
On the other hand, we have Android phones, so maybe Google is constantly monitoring those.....

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ApK

"I bought a box of instant water, but I don't know what to add.". - Steven Wright.


That there is what you call 'dry humor.'

There is little wrong that Steven can't make Wright.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ApK

My wife often remarks about the same thing. But since we have Amazon devices, and given their sometimes hostile competition, I doubt Alexa is that well integrated with Google's ads, so I'm guessing it's coincidence...

I can't speak to that as I only have one Echo device that I've just plugged in today. But...

...or whatever that effect is that makes you notice more of certain model of car on the road right after you get that model yourself.

Yeah, the first few times I chalked it up to that. But then at one point I was talking about something specific, but off the wall for me (can't remember exactly what now, let's say Japanese prison food) and suddenly boom! My Google feed helpfully showed me stories and ads about that specific thing.

If I can remember, I'll try talking about Italian Vegan food and see how long it takes for my phone to coincidentally think I might be interested in that.

On the other hand, we have Android phones, so maybe Google is constantly monitoring those.....

Your Android phone is just a much fancier Google/Nest speaker.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Google Go, Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Facebook Portal are NOT AI or smart. The voice to text is deliberately done on the companies' servers to acquire information about the users (the product). It could be done locally twenty years ago. Phones, tablets and TVs, not just so called "smart speakers" like Echo have been supplying user information to Google/Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook/Meta for years and this is being used in house illegally and sold to third parties. Poorly paid humans are also used to listen as actual speech recognition (really pattern matching and then a search back end for the text) isn't much better than 25 years ago. It just needs less "training" on site.

No it really couldn't. A modern good home computer with a beefy GPU can barely do it now with Mozilla DeepSpeech or one of the other options floating around. It's a very different problem to have arbitrary random speech correctly detected from 10 feet away with a $3 mic setup and your kid blasting Mario music in the background than to have one with a mic jammed up in your face that you spent 2 hours training on your voice and doesn't have to process any of the context of those words either.

There's a few open source smart AI systems out there. Mycroft which is probably the biggest of them by default passes your voice to a server to process. There are other ones that don't need it like Rhasspy but you get limited canned phrases that you have to specifically train.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by gmw

I think you are confusing privacy with security. They are related but not the same thing. In most instances all that is required to improve privacy is to NOT collect the data in the first place, or to collect it at a higher level. (eg: Almost no one needs to know my actual date of birth, for marketing purposes my age bracket is quite sufficient. The list goes on.)

I'm not confusing anything. I don't want them to to stop collecting data on me. I LIKE having targeted adverts. The more accurate, the better.