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Comment by Xylakant | Hacker News Reader

Both an amazon echo and an android phone require a key phrase to activate. It’s obviously possible that they could be used by amazon/google to listen in, but neither is a covert device that you can use to listen in on me, something that these smart watches enable.

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"Both an amazon echo and an android phone require a key phrase to activate."

But thanks to the devices closed nature, their manufacturers have the exclusive ability to remotely modify their workings so that the device could listen without the "owner" consent. This assuming it hasn't already been done and a single packet hidden into an update push can trigger undetectable monitoring. Technically it would be trivial to implement and trivial to turn off with another update so that it would remain undetectable in case of device hardware/firmware/software inspection.

SmartTV also should be treated as dangerous. https://bgr.com/2017/02/07/vizio-smart-tv-spying-case/ https://www.rte.ie/news/technology/2017/0308/858060-samsung-...

Android permissions don't distinguish between foreground and background audio capture, so every messenger app installed could be used to listen in.

"Could be used by a determined person with the necessary skills" and "is intended for and market to consumers as" is not the same thing even though there might not be a technological difference.

Until they are hacked and are used by others to listen in

This still is not their primary purpose. And yes, illegal acts could turn them into an illegal covert listening device, but that would be illegal, wouldn’t it?

Same could be said about smartphones and laptops.

Its why I prefer a hardware killswitch on a device.

My ThinkPad T61 got one. My MBPs don't. The T61 is from 2008. The MBPs are from 2010 and 2015.

The MBP at least has the camera light. Not proactive, but if you see the light come one at least you can kill the power

That's little comfort if an attacker can access the camera without the LED turning on. You can never be sure which is why integrated cameras and microphones get ripped out of devices used in sensitive areas.

Camera is hard-wired to the LED. If you don't trust the wiring of the device, kill switch is out too.

Depends on the camera. There have been hacks where a laptop camera is turned on but the LED is not. Hence people covering cameras with tape.

Have you found one for Thinkpads?

Yes, the MBPs got that fancy light. The TP can point the camera to the back tho (which could be worse). I covered all 3 with tape. Both 3 have that option. Only the TP has a killswitch for radios though. And it doesn't seem Apple is very fond of killswitches for radios, given their utter lack of expected functionality in iOS 11.

Bullshit. They're already "activated" if they can hear the key phrase in the first place.

In only the absolute best case, the always-on microphone is backed by a local-only module that picks up the keyphrase, and sends only subsequent communications to the cloud.

We can argue about the definition of covert, but Amazon Echo does allow others to somewhat sneakily listen in on you:

>When you drop in on your device or a contact's device, the light ring on your Echo pulses green, you connect automatically and can hear anything within range of the device

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

Drop in is an optional feature that needs to be explicitly enabled for a list of contacts. It’s not covert if you have to turn it on.

Like I said, we can argue over "covert." But once you allow a contact to drop in on you, they can do it at any time, with no prior warning, and you won't know it until they're already listening to you.

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