Amazon Echo Recorded A Couple’s Private Conversation And Sent It To One Of Their Contacts

Amazon Echo peeps! I have some news. It’s “spying” on you and could totally, maybe, possibly send your private conversations to one of your contacts. At least, that’s what happened to this couple.

You see, a couple from Portland was having a private conversation about hardwood floors. Nothing salacious or gossip-worthy, really. Apparently, their Amazon Echo was listening (which, duh. That’s how these devices operate) and recorded their conversation and sent the entire conversation to one of their contacts without their knowledge.

The wife, identified only as Danielle, told Seattle TV station KIRO 7 that they learned something was amiss when they received a phone call from the husband’s employee who lived in Seattle, telling them what he had inadvertently received. He told them to unplug their Alexa devices right away.

Danielle says she and her husband went around the house unplugging their devices — which they had in each room, controlling their home’s temperature, lights and security.

DANG. So we’re talking more than one device here. Creeptastic!

The employee sent the couple the sound file that the Echo had sent to him, and they were shocked to realize they had essentially been bugged.

“I felt invaded,” Danielle told KIRO. “A total privacy invasion. Immediately, I said, ‘I’m never plugging that device in again, because I can’t trust it.’ “

No offense, but what made them think they could trust it in the first place? Those devices are cool, but you plug them in KNOWING that they’re always listening. How else do you think they immediately respond to your cues?

Amazon tried to explain how this “incident” occurred.

“Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa.’ Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, ‘[contact name], right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right’. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”

Nope nope nope. Still creeped out. What if you were having a SERIOUSLY private convo and the Amazon device sent it to *insert the most humiliating person to hear said conversation here*?

By the way, this isn’t the first time this has happened either.

Last year, a North Carolina man said the same thing had happened to him: His Echo recorded 20 seconds of his conversation and sent it to his insurance agent without his knowledge.

Why was the Echo recording the conversation in the first place?

“Amazon’s Echo uses seven microphones and noise-canceling tech to listen out for its wake word,” Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey Fowler explains. “Doing so, it records about a second of ambient sound on the device, which it constantly discards and replaces. But once it thinks it hears its wake word, the Echo’s blue light ring activates and it begins sending a recording of what it hears to Amazon’s computers.”

I don’t own one of these devices for this exact reason. I know that it’s nearly impossible to weed out all the technology that tracks us (iPhones, smart TVs, what have you), but I refuse to have a device that’s sole purpose is to ALWAYS BE LISTENING.

Creeeeeeeeeeeepy.

h/t NPR