Amazon's Alexa Echo Records & Sends Out Private Family Conversation

My Alexa got so disgusted with our conversations that it self destructed, like on Mission Impossible.
Seriously, we use ours constantly for how to spell a word, as a timer for cooking, etc., and weather reports, to tell us a joke and make phone calls. It also alerts us when someone comes to our door.
 

Apple has Siri. I will sometimes accidentally alert her by saying a word that sounds like Siri (you wake her by either pressing a button or say “Hey Siri”) and then she’ll respond, sometimes humorously, to what I said after.

One funny example...I called across the kitchen to Sheri to ask her to please peel some potatoes. Siri responded immediately that she’d love to, but sadly had no hands. There was dead silence for a beat, then we all burst out laughing. 😂

I can tell Siri to send a text, and she’ll respond with who to, I tell her that, she asks me what I want it to say, I tell her that, and then she asks if I’m ready to send it....in other words a lot of failsafe before it’s dispatched.

Though I don’t own either myself, I’ve used both Alexa and Google in clients or family homes. It’s pretty dang convenient to be able to just tell Alexa to add eggs to the grocery list or tell Google to play Let it be, by the Beatles. In both cases though they have to be activated In order to get them to perform, by saying “Alexa!” Or “Hey Google!” which isn’t foolproof but is at lease measure of caution.
 
I love my Alexa, and use it all the time. I'm constantly finding new things that "she" can do.

A couple of days ago, I was in the living room watching TV, and a character in the show I was watching said, "Alexa, play "Stardust." His Alexa did, and so did mine, two rooms away! When I got over being startled, I really had to laugh. I yelled, "Alexa, stop!" and she stopped, of course. So they are able to understand commands from the TV.

Once, out of curiosity, I asked, "Alexa, when will I be able to see my children in person?" She answered, "I'm sorry, I cannot answer that at this time." Pretty creepy. (My daughter says they should have named her Hal.)

I've got the camera turned off, as enough is enough. 😄
 

I find any invasive behavior intolerable.
I am anti-tech, my son could do addition and subtraction with pen and paper, any
other math required a calculator. Grrrr

The only thing kids can do with pencil and paper is utter, 'Oh, how quaint.'

I keep ranting about "Future Shock,' published in the 1960's.
He was warning that the society cannot cope with the rapid technological change which alters the social behavior, but there is no awareness that advances in one area requires changes in all social behavior.
He was right; however, changes occurred more rapid than
he had predicted-so he wrote another book 😦 warning about rapid changes in the
fabric of society
 
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If you use a cell phone, your conversations are not private. Do you really think those underground government data centers are really for weather modeling? :)
 
It's probably a good idea to keep in mind what we are sending out using any device or system. Who knows how private our email is, or what we are texting on our phones? Or even our phone calls, for that matter? Alexa probably got caught up in a glitch that one time, but I doubt that it's snooping any more than any other technology.

We have to be responsible for what we send over the airwaves. It isn't the fault of the electronic devices!
 
fmdog44 said:
Some day, some way we will experience a technical glitch that will affect the entire world.
Click to expand...

One of these days, the sun is going to send a massive Solar Flare towards Earth, and seriously impact many of the satellites, and perhaps even cause major damage to the world's electrical grids. Can you imagine the chaos that would reign if the internet, and cell phones all went dead for more than a few hours? Losing electricity for more than a few hours could almost shut down the entire economies of most nations.

No matter how sophisticated we think we are, we are still at the mercy of Nature.
 

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