I will never have one of these in my house:
A New Mexico man was arrested for allegedly beating his girlfriend and threatening to kill her — after Amazon’s Alexa called police, authorities said.
Eduardo Barros, 28, became angered with his unidentified girlfriend while housesitting in Tijeras, about 15 miles east of Albuquerque, and the dispute suddenly turned physical on July 2, authorities said.
During the assault, Barros waved a gun and threatened to kill the woman before he allegedly asked: “Did you call the sheriffs?”
The question was inadvertently picked up by the smart speaker and the voice-powered virtual assistant recognized the phrase as a command — prompting it to call 911, Bernallillo County Sheriff’s Department
That is the official story, but for some reason I have never heard of Alexa dialing 911 mistakenly, due to something on the TV, or the radio. I also question why Alexa knew to call Police off the word “Sheriff,” which I would assume would have to have been programmed. Would coders code in for “Call the Sheriffs,” to dial 911, in addition to “Call the Police?” Also, it would seem she didn’t preface it with the word “Alexa,” which is supposed to trigger the ability to give commands.
Once you grasp that all of these things can probably be listened to with the click of a mouse in a facility thousands of miles away, you have to wonder whether this happened the way they said.
Interestingly, you can access all the recordings Alexa has officially made of you and saved on Amazon’s server:
I’m guessing most people don’t know this, but — surprise! — you can listen to every command you’ve ever given your Echo with the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet.
When I did, I was surprised to learn that some of my recordings had nothing to do with commands. There I was talking on my phone about the old studios I was selling. Alexa also recorded portions of a presidential debate. I am not sure why my real estate call was recorded, but one of the candidates almost said the word “Alexa.”
If you’d like to review your old recordings, open the Alexa app, tap on the Settings menu and then tap on History. Given the hundreds or thousands of commands most Echo users accumulate, you’ll find a huge catalog of your requests. Select the recording you’d like to review and tap the Play icon to listen to it.
No word on how to check the unofficial ones.
[…] Alexa Is Listening To You […]
I mean seriously who is dumb enough to put such a thing in their house, in the 1st place?
Echo, smart phones, computers, they’re all listening in, all the time, on everyone.
If they are interested in you, they are all listening at the same time. The world today is unreal.