
The Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Nightmare Came True - rayvy
https://gizmodo.com/the-amazon-alexa-eavesdropping-nightmare-came-true-1831231490
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shshhdhs
Dupe: [https://threatpost.com/amazon-1700-alexa-voice-
recordings/14...](https://threatpost.com/amazon-1700-alexa-voice-
recordings/140201/)

Also, the original has a better title & discussion. This title is clickbaity.

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TAForObvReasons
Conversation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727020)

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shshhdhs
Ah right, that's the dupe link I meant to post for mods. Thanks!

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hnrodey
An important detail not directly addressed in the article (or I missed it) is
do the audio recordings include conversations between Alexa commands? Or where
the audio recordings specifically related to the human issuing commands to the
device? Either way, it's a huge issue the data was leaked to the wrong
customer.

I find it hard to believe this was a one-time mistake.

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samplesize
Audio recordings are of the wake word and following command. The device has
lights to indicate when it's listening/recording.

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diggernet
Note that Alexa keeps listening after giving a response, so you can give a
followup question without a wake word.

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spullara
This is one of the real dangers of GDPR. If you make it really easy to
download the entirety of someone's online life mistakes and fraud will occur
where the wrong person receives it. This was probably some human error and not
malicious but I will bet the malicious cases are coming (or are already
occurring).

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kinkrtyavimoodh
That's quite a spin on the story.

This is not one of the dangers of the GDPR, it's a danger of companies keeping
sensitive user data with them forever when they clearly are incapable of being
good stewards of it (and no, you don't deserve to be called good stewards if
you have even one leak).

Perhaps, just perhaps, this will incentivize companies to have strict data
expiry policies (at the very least), but I am not holding my breath.

