I have 'Alexa, turn the fucking christmas tree on', because wife was nagging as I was trying to set it up.
That's as far as my home automation goes, probably for the best.

Also have a friend who has a daughter named Alexa - much more flexible, she can get beer, translate Spanish<>English, etc.

Let’s see if it works for me. *stands in front of the microwave* Alexa, I need pizza.........

If no kids are in the house, perhaps using a "clapper" instead of Alexa? We will never have an Alexa in our house.......

Interesting concept. Would prefer a remote control of some type not alexa.

I wonder if you could program Alexa to respond to "Alexa, please kill these intruders for me." with "Certainly, SIG2340. Can I use the remotely operated 12 gauge?" followed by the sounds of an action being shucked.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
Couldn’t you just program the cabinet to respond to a different phrase?

“Alexa, I need condoms.”

How would the government know what kind of fun you’ve got stashed in the drawer?

or

Open the Pod bay door,

My first reaction was Cool!

My next reaction..Now,that bitch Alexa knows where my guns are!

https://www.breitbart.com/tech...wDsUA6YOXTg90z-1x8Zc


Amazon’s Alexa Devices Are Recording Your Life – and People Keep Buying Them


The MIT Technology Review reported in 2018 that Amazon Alexa home assistant devices may actually be listening in on people’s daily lives even when not given commands. Despite such warnings, the e-commerce giant sold out of Alexa-powered devices before Christmas as their popularity continues to grow unabated.

The MIT Technology Review reported in an article titled “Yes, Alexa is recording mundane details of your life, and it’s creepy as hell,” that Amazon Alexa home assistant devices are listening in on people’s conversations, a theory that has been around for some time but has never been confirmed.

The MIT Technology Review reports:

Beyond all the things I’ve clearly asked Alexa to do, in the past several months it has also tuned in, frequently several times a day, for no obvious reason. It’s heard me complain to my dad about something work-related, chide my toddler about eating dinner, and talk to my husband—the kinds of normal, everyday things you say at home when you think no one else is listening.

And that’s precisely why it’s terrifying: this sort of mundane chitchat is my mundane chitchat. I invited Alexa into our living room to make it easier to listen to Pandora and occasionally check the weather, not to keep a log of intimate family details or record my kid saying “Mommy, we going car” and forward it to Amazon’s cloud storage.

he MIT Technology Review notes that constant recording is one of the unfortunate downsides of home assistants that constantly listen for wake words such as “Alexa!” or “Hey, Siri!”



Through 2019, Amazon faced continual bad news about its Alexa-powered devices on the subject of user privacy and security. Reports were published showing that Amazon employees and contractors located in India, Costa Rica, and Romania had ready access to users’ recordings and spent nine hours a day listening to the snippets.

The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as “Taylor Swift” and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording.

This revelation led to a lawsuit against Amazon which claimed that Jeff Bezos’ Big Tech giant was breaking the law by recording children without their parent’s consent.

In another threat to security, researchers in Tokyo documented that Amazon’s voice assistant hardware could be hacked with a $5 laser pointer.

Despite the negativity about Amazon’s devices recording users when they don’t expect it, sales of Alexa-powered devices have continued to rise. Early in 2019, Amazon announced that it had sold 100 million Alexa devices. Sales haven’t slowed down since then. Although the company has not released Christmas sales figures, for the third quarter of 2019, it sold more than 10 million devices and enjoys a 36 percent share of the market. It’s next closest competitor, the Chinese company Alibaba, has a 13 percent market share.



Breitbart News has previously published a guide explaining how to stop Amazon employees from having access to Alexa recordings, however, this does not stop the device from recording users’ daily interactions but rather protects them from being listened to by Amazon employees directly. Read the full guide here.



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I was an early adopter of Nest thermostats, I may switch to Ecobee now that Nest has been bought. All of these wonderful devices are spying on you, or at least using/selling your metadata. Alexa and similar products are a very direct "spying," it basically has to in order to function. They just shouldn't keep/sell what is recorded. But I'm sure the fine print says they own it, and until someone sues...

Wasn't it Ring that was "sharing" with the cops?

I like this idea better. Everyone needs a Boomba.