Digital technology, maybe specifically the internet, has made it ridiculously easy to masquerade surveillance as convenience.
Email is convenient. It also means a handful of companies have direct access to a mountain of unencrypted messages.
Social media is convenient. Its also an excellent way to track people, as well as influence and even silence them.
Wearable devices and smart appliances are convenient. Again, though, they quite often come with poor security measures and collection of data that people would be shocked by if they ever actually saw what was collected.
"We promise Alexa only listens when you say the right phrase." Just don't ask how it knows when you say it without first listening.
Amazon Alexa is no doubt a great microphone but it’s also an exceptional bastion host for Amazon. And probably a great malware delivery device. I found out Alexa let me know my printer was running low on toner. So if it can do that it can spy in a lot of other things.
I don't think it's "spying" so much as reading the information supplied by the IPP enabled printer that's on the network. The printer readily supplies that information, the Alexa isn't really snooping. If anything, the printer shouldn't be supplying information across the network that readily - I know I turned off a lot of my printer's capabilities because I have no desire to let people use it outside of my local network.
I think the point is that alexa is actively scanning the network for that information, which begs the question what else is it scanning for, or might in a future automatic update?
Fair enough. It would be prudent to assume that your Alexa is actively looking for whatever open information is supplied by devices on your network, especially information that has been announced as being supported by Amazon[1].
Email is convenient. It also means a handful of companies have direct access to a mountain of unencrypted messages.
Social media is convenient. Its also an excellent way to track people, as well as influence and even silence them.
Wearable devices and smart appliances are convenient. Again, though, they quite often come with poor security measures and collection of data that people would be shocked by if they ever actually saw what was collected.
"We promise Alexa only listens when you say the right phrase." Just don't ask how it knows when you say it without first listening.