[Scharon Harding at Ars Technica]

Don't keep an Amazon Echo (or any smart speaker) in a room where you'll be having sensitive conversations, either with your family or on a work call. Particularly if you're a journalist or activist - but privacy is something everybody should be guarded about.

"Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon’s cloud."

As the author points out, even if you trust Amazon (and, to be clear, you shouldn't trust any vendor with your private conversations), there's reason to worry:

"In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in civil penalties over the revelation that it stored recordings of children’s interactions with Alexa forever. Adults also didn’t feel properly informed of Amazon’s inclination to keep Alexa recordings unless prompted not to until 2019—five years after the first Echo came out."

It was a nice idea, but it's time to give them a rest. There are plenty of use cases for smart agents, but they don't need to be listening to you all the time like you live in some kind of science fiction movie. You don't know who else is listening with them.

#Technology

[Link]