Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28.
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Nobody working on the inside has ever leaked anything regarding this potentially massive breach of privacy? A perfectly secret conspiracy by everyone involved?
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"Even in the US" seems to imply stronger customer and privacy protections on the US.
"Leopards can eat people's faces, even in the US?"
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The same people who buy mobile phones; despite those being bugs/spy-devices.
At least, on mobile devices, it's typically easier to install a privacy-focused firmware (like LineageOS or GrapheneOS). Those AI assistants are completely locked down.
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If you do not want to set your voice recordings setting to 'Don't save recordings,' please follow these steps before March 28th:
Am I the only one curious to know what these steps are? The image cuts off the rest of the email.
- Unplug your amazon echo devices
- Hit it with a hammer
- Send it to an electronics recycler
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Do the device you wrote this on have a microphone?
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The same people who buy mobile phones; despite those being bugs/spy-devices.
Phones are at least easier to justify since everyone kinda needs one now and there aren't many great private options, especially for the lay person
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Which Echo devices ever supported local only processing? They cost about £30. There's no kit that can do decent voice commands for that money. You'd be lucky to have a device that processes claps to turn the lights on for that.
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There aren't any immediate drop in replacements that won't require some work, but there is Home Assistant Voice - It just requires that you also have a Home Assistant server setup, which is the more labor intensive part. It's not hard, just a lot to learn.
And for now it's voice assist is garbage in comparison. I have home assistant, and a few Alexa units, so I set up nabu and tried it, but it's slow and can maybe do 1 in 5 commands, while Alexa is much more reliable.
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Phones are at least easier to justify since everyone kinda needs one now and there aren't many great private options, especially for the lay person
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The same people who buy mobile phones; despite those being bugs/spy-devices.
True, but a mobile phone is basically a world brain, calculator, camera, flashlight, you can watch movies on it in hi def, hate it all you want, it's one of the most versatile tools on the planet.
An echo dot, it just spy garbage and nothing else -
True, but a mobile phone is basically a world brain, calculator, camera, flashlight, you can watch movies on it in hi def, hate it all you want, it's one of the most versatile tools on the planet.
An echo dot, it just spy garbage and nothing elseI mean what better spot to syphon of each and every piece of information about you....
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Phones are at least easier to justify since everyone kinda needs one now and there aren't many great private options, especially for the lay person
If you give up your freedom for convenience, then you will lose both.
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Do the device you wrote this on have a microphone?
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At least, on mobile devices, it's typically easier to install a privacy-focused firmware (like LineageOS or GrapheneOS). Those AI assistants are completely locked down.
I am sorry but the telephony system itself is fundamentally a privacy threat.
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How the fuck does anyone even buy one of these
@richardisaguy @Tea sometimes they just come free with stuff. We got given two Google ones when my husband bought a Pixel phone. We were going to sell them on but we never got round to it. You can physically turn off the microphone part though (at least it tells you it's turned off so fingers crossed) so we use the one with a screen as a digital photo frame (and a speaker) and the other one as just a speaker.
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If you were using one, you were already okay with this.
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If you were using one, you were already okay with this.
Yeah. Hell, chances are they were already
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If you give up your freedom for convenience, then you will lose both.
I mean, it's not convience. It's outright necessary for most jobs.
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I meant they're easier to justify in the sense that I see why people don't put much thought into putting a spying device in their pocket, not that I agree with the disregard. Most peoples' friends, family, employers, etc. all expect them to have a cell phone and be available by it. Additionally, the way most people interact with their phones, the spying is much less obvious. They joke about them "always listening", but a lot of people don't understand the privacy concerns of pretty typical internet use, so the fact that the device has more than just a microphone, it appears to be worth it to a more typical consumer than us.
Contrast that with an Alexa, google home, or apple home thing, devices which nobody cares if someone else doesn't own, which most people only see as a microphone and speaker, and whose primary functionality is to always be listening to you. The skepticism is much easier to arise.
I'm not saying the level at which cell phones spy on their users is acceptable or even worth it, just that I see why the average user who isn't conscious of their privacy doesn't regard them with the same concern they do smart speakers.
