Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

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I got asked this question by someone at work just yesterday. In the end, it is as simple as do you trust Apple, Google and Amazon? Do you trust that there are enough good people working on these projects to prevent abuse?

I have an Alexa in my bathroom. It is convenient to use to listen to music and check the weather while I get ready. If someone at Amazon (or the NSA) wants to listen in on the things that happen in my bathroom, go right ahead. Very little of my life happens within listening of my bathroom.

More importantly, I carry a mobile device with listening capabilities and internet connection in my pocket basically at all times. I can turn off Siri or Hey Google but again I have to trust that it really is off. I have to trust that apps like FB or Twitter aren't recording while I use their apps. Additionally, I can't stop all the people around me from having Siri or Hey Google turned on. This doesn't even cover the ability for a 0-day to be exploitable on all handsets and used by a state level actor.

I unfortunately think the ship has sailed on complete privacy in today's online world. Everyone is being tracked, today to sell ads but a dystopian future is largely inevitable. Our mobile phones are tracked but also our digital payments and our cars as we go through tolls (or completely if you have on-star or wi-fi cars) and our movements as we use ride-share and even our walking as traffic cameras are extended with facial recognition. The only way out is to be completely off grid in a self-sustaining farm.

> I carry a mobile device with listening capabilities and internet connection in my pocket basically at all times. I can turn off Siri or Hey Google but again I have to trust that it really is off.

Every time I hear complaints about Google Home/HomePod I bring this up. Most people just shrug and hand-wave it away, saying something like "yeah, but it's just creepy", even when they acknowledge that their phone has even greater spying capabilities. People are terrible at risk assessment.

Having capability =/= using those capabilities.

Google Home/HomePod/Alexa have spying as their primary purpose. It's literally everything they're good for. Take that away and they're useless.

Phones can spy on you if you keep everything turned on, which I don't. As it's in their interest in it to make as much profit off of me as possible, it's also in their interest to oblige by my preferences. If I found out that they don't respect my choices, they'd lose me as a customer for life. 30% they earn from all of my app store purchases isn't a lot, but it's bigger than zero.

Some significant wide spread hacks / ransoms could bring that ship back to port real quick.

> I have an Alexa in my bathroom. It is convenient to use to listen to music and check the weather while I get ready.

Get ready for your mind to be blown, but I actually managed to do that as early as 1983 with a clock radio plugged into the wall. Plus it didn’t listen to my conversations or send analytics about me to a company either. I think this technology was around even earlier but not sure since I was a kid. We were truly ahead of times back then!

Same. These days, I just set my phone on the counter and let it play the news, or a good podcast.

All I could think of, given the part you quoted was the precommand recording.

[Bio sound] "Music please Alexa."

You know someone is checking those for research, improvement.

Maybe somewhere in the bowels, pun intended, of Amazon there is a literal squeak of the week leader board.

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