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Comment by bentt | Hacker News Reader

My kids have grown up with Alexa devices. They use them as speakers, to listen to Audible, and as ways to communicate with us. I've been under the belief that the devices do not spy on us, based on a few test articles I read. If I ever heard that that was not the case I'd jettison them all from the house.

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You're very trusting. I won't let alexa in my home, let alone near my kids. How do you trust something that you can't know what is being done (ie recorded for later, later use - see the github nodelete stories) with it?

Yet in your house you likely have a mobile phone, a computer, perhaps a Smart TV; all with microphones and a long history of privacy breaching hacks.

I'm not that trusting. I just think that if it came out that Alexa devices were recording outside of their wake word then it would do tremendous damage to the brand and they'd not want to risk it. I feel like the incentives are aligned in this case.

I don't consider data collection and targeting from data collected during the wake word to be spying.

I think it's a subjective call on what you consider spying. Amazon and its integrations / 3rd parties are certainly using what they can gather based on Alexa interactions to better sell and serve their ad ecosystem at minimum right? And I've never seen someone leave theirs muted/red in practice.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.10920 among others are certainly available in this question space to help navigate your own tolerances.

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