Comment on ‘Alexa, what do you know about us?’ What I discovered when I asked Amazon to tell me everything my family’s smart speaker had heard

• homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  A couple of days later, I received an email containing links to gigabytes of information: particulars of every purchase I’ve ever made – from the noir novel I bought on the day that Amazon UK launched to the 28th pair of headphones acquired in as many years. Records of every page turn of every Kindle ebook I’ve opened, every moment of Prime content I’ve watched, measured by the second. And, of course, the details of every interaction we have ever had with our Echo; every question asked, every song requested, every timer set.

  They don’t make it easy to find gold among the fields of data available for download.

  That’s exactly what it is.

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  • stevo887@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It gave him back every piece of data he had put into Amazon which was tied to a log in. Where is the spying? He willing did this and the whole piece felt like an observation more than a worry. Just my perception that though.

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    • homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      “it gave him back every piece of data”

      Back from where? Back from Amazon where it lives, after being collected from the writer’s house. Where it is regularly used for algorithmic massage to better pluck dollars off of them and further direct their media habits.

      Honestly, this is not hard.

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      • stevo887@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Collecting data is different than spying.

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• LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  You’re getting douchevoted for speaking heresy but you’re right, Amazon only records requests and commands - i.e. what you say after “Alexa”. Every article about what Amazon actually does and doesn’t record is quickly forgotten because sinister plots are far more entertaining.

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  • stevo887@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Thank you and god forbid someone has a different opinion. There are a lot of assumptions on the internet about what smart speakers are and aren’t but this article didn’t reveal anything shocking IMO. The writer didn’t even seem bothered by all of it. It just came off as a simple observation piece to me.

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    • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Yeah the tone wasn’t OMG I’m being spied on, it was more like here’s what I found when I perused an old family album I forgot about.

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