Off Topic Alexa

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Suckmyklopp said:
Mind blown!
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I reckon whoever invented Alexa and the rest must have grown up on Wallace and Grommit!

They just weren't clever enough to make the thing that makes the toast, throws it up in front of your face and adds a dash of butter!

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Treble said:
I don't really need a device to turn my lights on and off.

I usually just turn them on when it gets dark and turn them off again when I go to bed.

If I go into a room I turn them on, on my way in. And turn them off on my way out.

It's magical.
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What's your full address?
 
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Sharpe* said:
I use a VPN mate.

Encrypted internet connection.

My IP address currently has me based in New York (I'm not).

Also use VPN on my phone but its more difficult because blocking your location makes apps like google maps useless!

Big companies harvest your data to create a profile on who you are, what you like, where you live, your age, what your politics are, what your religion is and tailor that to make as much out of you as they can by trying to convince you to buy things via advertisements.

The government is also allowed to collect that data off of companies too.

Its big business. Alexa is just an extension of the invasion of your privacy.

If you're happy with that then fine but I'm not.
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You make some good points but it's all linked to a belief that these devices are on permanent listening mode and recording every conversation in the room. I don't believe they are or do. That's ok, we can disagree on that.

I have genuine questions which the conspiracy theory still hasn't answered. We're told that recording starts when you say the trigger word. This is either true or false. If it's true, which I believe it is, I can go to the appropriate amazon page or ask Alexa directly to delete the recordings. If it's false then there had to be two recording lists per account, the ones you can delete and the rest of the recordings which you (some of you)believe to be everything spoken in the room the device is in. Questions: how do they separate the stuff being recorded into two lots so that they get to keep a secret set of recordings? where are they storing this humongous amount of recordings? Who ( which individuals or organisations,).would be interested in hours and hours and hours worth of unidentifiable mundane conversations?

The Alexa device has to be registered to an Amazon account but it can be gifted so the account holder isn't necessarily the same person who has the device in their home. They really are pretty much unidentifiable unless,, you choose to attach it to an ordering account which needs a delivery address and even then it's not necessarily the address where the Alexa device 'lives'.

I'm a very private person , not on any social media,, will never post a picture of myself or family anywhere or send any to friends in case they unwittingly post them on their social media. And I'm not the least bit worried about Alexa. Phone and computer, yes.
 
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johnsonsbaby said:
You make some good points but it's all linked to a belief that these devices are on permanent listening mode and recording every conversation in the room. I don't believe they are or do. That's ok, we can disagree on that.

I have genuine questions which the conspiracy theory still hasn't answered. We're told that recording starts when you say the trigger word. This is either true or false. If it's true, which I believe it is, I can go to the appropriate amazon page or ask Alexa directly to delete the recordings. If it's false then there had to be two recording lists per account, the ones you can delete and the rest of the recordings which you (some of you)believe to be everything spoken in the room the device is in. Questions: how do they separate the stuff being recorded into two lots so that they get to keep a secret set of recordings? where are they storing this humongous amount of recordings? Who ( which individuals or organisations,).would be interested in hours and hours and hours worth of unidentifiable mundane conversations?

The Alexa device has to be registered to an Amazon account but it can be gifted so the account holder isn't necessarily the same person who has the device in their home. They really are pretty much unidentifiable unless,, you choose to attach it to an ordering account which needs a delivery address and even then it's not necessarily the address where the Alexa device 'lives'.
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With regards to listening to hours and hours, I am guessing there are certain trigger words (probably for consumer marketing sake) that get flagged electronically and they're the ones that get filtered out.

That's all I got btw.
 
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Treble said:
With regards to listening to hours and hours, I am guessing there are certain trigger words (probably for consumer marketing sake) that get flagged electronically and they're the ones that get filtered out.

That's all I got btw.
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With Alexa (Amazon Echo device) you have to say Alexa to activate it. It doesn't recognise the word but the acoustic pattern so sometimes it's triggered by similar sounds, not very often in my case. It plays the song you've asked for if it has it as part of your account and it answers questions ' I think its linked to wikipedia. It may or may not be listening to me all the time :bandit:

If marketing companies are getting something out of the song titles I like, good luck to them.
 
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johnsonsbaby said:
With Alexa (Amazon Echo device) you have to say Alexa to activate it. It doesn't recognise the word but the acoustic pattern so sometimes it's triggered by similar sounds, not very often in my case. It plays the song you've asked for if it has it as part of your account and it answers questions ' I think its linked to wikipedia. It may or may not be listening to me all the time :bandit:
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They have staff constantly listening to conversations on the premise that it’s used to ‘improve the service’.

There’s been examples of recorded conversations being sent in error to contacts due to misinterpretation of a command. It’s intrusive and without regulation, potentially dangerous, as the information gleaned could be used for commercial purposes in the future.
 
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johnsonsbaby said:
With Alexa (Amazon Echo device) you have to say Alexa to activate it. It doesn't recognise the word but the acoustic pattern so sometimes it's triggered by similar sounds, not very often in my case. It plays the song you've asked for if it has it as part of your account and it answers questions ' I think its linked to wikipedia. It may or may not be listening to me all the time :bandit:

If marketing companies are getting something out of the song titles I like, good luck to them.
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But if the questions you ask, or conversations you're having, have certain words that become flagged up then it wouldn't be too onerous to keep track. A computer could pretty much do it all, from thousands of homes and collate into specific algorithms and even automatically target marketing or other commercial material to them all. It wouldn't need much manpower.

Btw I know nothing about Alexa, Echo etc, but was just answering that one point about having to take hours to sift through the conversations.
 
Tobes said:
They have staff constantly listening to conversations on the premise that it’s used to ‘improve the service’.

There’s been examples of recorded conversations being sent in error to contacts due to misinterpretation of a command. It’s intrusive and without regulation, potentially dangerous, as the information gleaned could be used for commercial purposes in the future.
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They openly tell you when you buy one that they will keep recordings of everything you ask it and also show you how to delete recordings. I've not done that yet.

It's only intrusive if you believe it's listening to you all the time. I don't believe that for one minute.
 
Treble said:
But if the questions you ask, or conversations you're having, have certain words that become flagged up then it wouldn't be too onerous to keep track. A computer could pretty much do it all, from thousands of homes and collate into specific algorithms and even automatically target marketing or other commercial material to them all. It wouldn't need much manpower.

Btw I know nothing about Alexa, Echo etc, but was just answering that one point about having to take hours to sift through the conversations.
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I don't believe there are hours of conversations stored anywhere. I simply don't believe it's recording all the time. That was my point ie what would the point be in doing that.
 
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