this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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Funny: Home of the Haha

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

For “Hey Google”, “Hey Alexa” or “Hey Siri” to work your phone/smart speaker has to be always listening

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is only partially true. Yes, it's listening for those keywords, but only for them. Sometimes that's even an extra chip in your phone, otherwise it would kill your battery in no time.

Which is one of the reasons you can't just customize the command to whatever you want to say.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes, it’s listening for those keywords, but only for them.

If you use those services, I would ask that you do a data takeout and actually HEAR what recordings they have.

We used an Alexa-enabled speaker, and it recorded many, many conversations that were not direct Alexa commands. Perhaps it was an "oops" type of eavesdropping, but Amazon still felt that the recordings needed to be saved on their server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mate, your Alexa is plugged in, it's not a phone. You agree to your Alexa constantly listening when you buy it. It's a feature, not a bug.

If your phone would listen as much as your Alexa you'd be out of battery in three hours.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mate, your Alexa is plugged in, it’s not a phone.

Battery-powered bluetooth speaker.

You agree to your Alexa constantly listening when you buy it. It’s a feature, not a bug.

For sure, I'm just pointing out that these devices are always listening, and someone can agree to the assistant features, that shouldn't include recording entire conversations that have nothing to do with Alexa.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

That's more of a bug instead of someone actively monitoring you. The device accidentally thought you activated it, so it started listening.

You wouldn't be able to access those recordings if they were trying to spy on you.

Besides that, you literally agreed to it when buying and setting the device up. This is not the case with your phone (if you switch the assistant off, if it's on and heard the keyword it might still upload data of course).