
Alexa Calling doesn’t allow any numbers in the phone’s contacts to be blocked - Terretta
https://medium.com/@elise81/alexa-calling-has-a-major-privacy-flaw-7ee42ddcb493
======
gumby
> I was particularly excited for the feeling of a “home phone” ... every
> contact that also has the Alexa app is now in my Alexa Calling contacts.
> Among my contacts were old landlords, many co-workers, random vendor account
> managers, city councilmen, and of course, crazy ex-boyfriends. And each one
> now has a direct line into my home.

This is of course how the old "home phone" worked, and there was even a book
sent to every house that listed the "direct line into the home" of everybody
else.

~~~
Johnny555
But modern phones don't work that way - if I don't want my boss or my crazy ex
to call me, I can set their number not to ring my phone. There is apparently
no way to do that with the Alexa app.

There are very few people that I actually want to get calls from.

~~~
remarkEon
>There is apparently no way to do that with the Alexa app.

But certainly it's not impossible for this to be fixed.

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arjie
The Alexa documentation says

> Alexa will let you know when someone is calling, and a green light ring will
> appear on your supported Echo device. You can ask Alexa to answer or ignore
> the call.

[https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16713667011](https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16713667011)

That's similar to a phone, isn't it? This blogpost doesn't seem to have
articulated the problem very well.

Is it contacting each of the contacts in some way or adding it to a directory?

~~~
netsharc
But there doesn't seem to be a way to silently block calls. I'm pretty sure on
Android or iPhone I can blacklist numbers, so I would not even get a
notification that the number tried to call me. If the device says "Call from
$CRAZY_EX, do you want to answer?", you'd feel terrorized. Of course the
solution would be to unplug the device.

It's pathetic that "We will take your whole address book, and tell everyone on
it, that you're contactable here." is the default nowadays, that even "secure"
alternatives are doing it, e.g. www.jwz.org/blog/2017/03/signal-leaks-your-
phone-number-to-everyone-in-your-contacts/ (jwz hates HN so copy-paste this
link...).

~~~
MrQuincle
That blog post seems unjustified.

Quote from one of the comments: "If I understand what Moxie said earlier, the
way this actually works is: every single Signal user periodically says to the
Signal server, "here are (hashes of) all of the phone numbers in my contacts,
which of these are registered with Signal?" Same effect, different mechanism."

It's not the case that everyone is told.

~~~
asadlionpk
I recently had to read that post by moxie to try and implement secure contact
discovery in my app. Here it is: [https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-
discovery/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/)

~~~
MrQuincle
Really interesting read, thanks! What did you use in the end?

~~~
asadlionpk
It's for a side-project with few users and I still have to take that decision.
I am too scared to just upload (and store) user contacts on my end. That's a
huge responsibility IMO.

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technofiend
The WhatsApp/Signal/Alexa anti-pattern of "Let's mine all the numbers in your
phonebook and tell them your business" is exactly why you need to curate
multiple profiles these days... My marketing profile has no personal contacts
in it and vice versa.

------
partiallypro
I'm not sure I understand the appeal of Alexa or Alexa Calling, is there such
a market for people taking calls from a speaker phone? When do people not just
have their phone on them?

Is there proof that people are using Alexa for more than just showing their
friends? I know this is an anecdote, but I know 3 people with Alexas and all 3
have them collecting dust. I just think in a way this new tech is largely
hype. Microsoft released numbers on Cortana use and it appeared good...but how
much of that was actually voice? Same with Siri, and Google Now.

The voice tech I see getting the most adoption right now (again an anecdote)
is people controlling their TVs with their voices. Beit Cortana on Xbox,
FireTV or Comcast's voice remote. I don't see much evidence in my own life of
people using assistants like Alexa that only rely on voice. I see people
showing them off to their friends and then forgetting they exist. In a way I
would argue that Alexa if the digital assistants "Kinect moment."

~~~
conception
Alexa wasn't a big sell to me before I looked at the home automation side of
things. Alexa + Hue is pretty fantastic. Settled down for a movie "Alex, dim
the lights." Or lying in bed. Or setting a program while on vacation. That
plus hooking it up to spotify is pretty great. If you're cooking, "Alex next."
etc. The classic "Alexa how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon" comes up from
time to time as well. It's 100% a thing no one needs, but certainly has a use.

~~~
BatFastard
Or listening to the radio, I just say play NPR in the morning. And the skills
are becoming more useful. Plus I like the Flash Briefing.

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ipqk
100-1 this was built by a bunch of young dudes. Get one female on the team,
and she would have said: "uh, maybe we need a way to block people".

This is why we need better diversity in tech.

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rovek
Privacy preferences aside, this is just a terribly under-specified feature. An
inability to manage contacts or the feature itself is just embarrassing.

------
stevefeinstein
The title of this post is what the title of the article should be. The article
is presuming that a feature as designed is a flaw. When articles throw FUD
like that they lose credibility. Tell it like it is, and let people decide if
they want to use it. And if people don't then it'll be up to the developers to
give people something they will use.

~~~
monksy
The whole fear mongering really turned me off to the article. ("This could be
used against domestic violence victims" etc)

------
dogma1138
Isn't this the same as FaceTime/iMessage and other messaging apps?

You know who on your contact list has an iPhone, WhatsApp etc.

~~~
sigmar
There is definitely a "block" feature in WhatsApp (has had it for at least 5
years)

~~~
dogma1138
Is there one for FaceTime/IMessage? I never seen it and the FaceTime dial
option is in my contacts for every contact that has an iPhone it seems to even
update on its own since contacts that have migrated off or to Apple have been
kept upto date.

------
donatj
Maybe I'm old but I'd love to get a call or a message from out of the blue.
It's been a couple years since it happened and I miss random interaction.

I met one of my dearest longtime friends years ago in the late 90 while
messaging people on AOL at random in their directory.

That sort of meeting people is dead.

------
vannevar
I'm seriously considering getting a cheap Android phone just for Alexa. The
requirement to give it access to all your contacts is absurd.

~~~
stupidhn
Have you considered voting with your wallet and not using the Alexa service?

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MiddleEndian
For me, the most important features for a communication platform (aside from
reliability) are the ability to block users and the ability to mute alerts
from users.

It boggles my mind that this isn't universal, like people want to be
interrupted.

~~~
stevefeinstein
You must not be that old. Telephones best feature was it put everyone on an
equal footing. Anyone could call anyone else. The government levied a fee on
all phones to make sure that everyone would have equal access to them. And we
do. It's why it worked so well for so long. It stopped working well, when we
added caller ID, and blocking. If you want to block someone it should be hard,
and you should have a reason beyond being annoyed. We're becoming into a
selfish society who are turning against each other. When we need to start
turning towards each other and remembering the golden rule.

~~~
MiddleEndian
I'm 28 which is not that old admittedly, although perhaps older than the
median startup employee. By the time I was fourteen I stopped answering my
home phone because it was just telemarketers and I was fortunate enough to be
an early cell phone user ( and mostly communicated with my friends via AIM).

I am not turning towards anyone. I want to choose who can contact me and when,
because I like being able to sleep and do things without interruption. The
fact that phone numbers can be hidden or falsified when initiating contact
with me makes phone calls rather broken and is the main reason I haven't
investigated an AdBlockPlus style phone filtering app to preemptively block
telemarketers.

It is not selfish to want to live peacefully, it is selfish to demand the
right to interrupt me.

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maneesh
Just wait like 3-6 months and they will release this feature

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zamalek
Does Alexa automatically answer the call?

~~~
rocqua
It might be that it notifies those other users of your phone number when they
might not know it. I.e. if you store a number of someone you don't want to
speak to so you can decline their calls.

Supposing you did this for extra piece of mind, even though they don't have
your number, it would suck if they end result would be you giving them your
number.

~~~
fps
I don't think there's any notification that someone has added you to their
contact list. That is, if you have someone's phone number in your contact
list, and they sign up for amazon calling, you see their name in a list.
However, if they don't have your number already, they can't see you as a
contact. The only information leaking is that someone can learn that you're
still using the phone number they have for you and that you're using amazon
calling. Contacts in amazon calling don't appear to be two way.

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hemantv
For now

