It seems that it could be a pretty big deal to people who toss their old devices in their curbside trash to upgrade or otherwise discard their old Echo devices.

Most people don't have the background to understand that attacks like this are possible. Hell, the other day I almost chucked a couple of old 11n era APs flashed with OpenWRT into the trash until I remembered that there's some incredibly sensitive data (SSID, key, logs, etc.) stored in a manner that likely wouldn't hold up to a physical attack.

I do have the understanding of attacks like this and in a moment of haste to decluter my home office I nearly opened myself up to an attack like the one described in this post.