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Comment by drcongo | Hacker News Reader

I'm constantly amazed that anyone would willing have an Alexa or Google Home device inside their home. Or anywhere else for that matter.

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Are people still surprised that these devices are capturing information???

Yes, because FB, Amazon and everybody else invest in constant PR to assuage people's concerns. That messaging is much more common than stories of people discovering what they actually store.

Your phone also has a microphone.

"One sec, I'll just turn my house off, I don't want it listening."

Theirs an age old saying in Hindi which basically means "walls have ears".

Now it's literally true.

There is an old saying in Persian which says "Walls have mice, and mice have ears".

دیوار موش داره و موش گوش داره Divar Moosh Dareh, Moosh Goosh Dareh.

Might as well buy all the devices you can then of course!

Yes, but I tried to say "ok google" to my phone, and if I don't press anything, it doesn't switch on.

Not to say it couldn't, but by default, it's not supposed to be listening.

While alexi is.

My intent is different.

Thank you, hadn't realised. I also don't have Amazon or Google apps on my phone so have never worried about it.

This line of reasoning is akin to someone giving up on their diet entirely because they ate a single cookie.

Might as well open the floodgates! There’s no point anymore.

That's overly reductionist. It's more like saying that there's no point in raising the drawbridge because there's an open window the enemy can shoot arrows through.

Yours is certainly a more fitting metaphor. But either way the point is that it’s ridiculous to assert that one must be 100% perfect in all their endeavors in order to criticize or critique an action.

In iPhones when you lay down your phone screen down the mic is physically cut off. That's why you can't call "Hey Siri" with a phone laying like that.

Wrong. That's a software switch, not physical hardware.

That just proves Siri is disabled, not the microphone.

If the hardware switch is controlled by software then it isn't much of a hardware switch.

I know someone who is head of critical SRE for a major wall street trading firm (you've definitely heard of them), who has these devices all over their house running everything from window blinds to outdoor accent lighting.

They know very well Amazon is probably listening to and recording every last work spoken in their home, but just cannot see what the big concern is, arguing that Amazon risks massive legal and PR damage if it's ever found out they acted on any information gleaned from his (or anyone's) household audio. I don't understand this risk calculation at all.

> I don't understand this risk calculation at all

Either a) they are not using it, or b) if they do use against the terms then a 7-9 figure cheque will be arriving in your letterbox.

If it an 50-50 chance that Jeff is sitting there listening to your friend all day, then risk calculation wise buying a device has a net present value to the buyer of $5mil.

I tend to agree Amazon probably isn't using the information in untoward ways. Yes, the pr hit alone would be devastating.

But I think you have to calculate in the risk of a leak or hack, which is definitely non-zero. The files exist, so they are a privacy and security risk.

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