Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

[emptybits]

  s/can't/doesn't/

It's a company with the time, resources, and customer awareness to do this. They can. They have chosen not to.

[uzero]

Why people are acting surprised about this? To me it has been always more than obvious that whatever you say to any of the internet connected “assistants” will be stored and kept as long as the assistant owning company likes.

[whatshisface]

There's a difference between "it's obvious that they're doing it" (which is only true for people above a certain paranoia line) and "here, look at this proof that they're doing it." There are plenty of things that are obvious to me based on my idea of people's motivations and past behavior, but if I talk to someone lower down on the paranoia spectrum they don't believe me - unless I can point to evidence that they're actually doing it. (A fair thing to ask for, after all.)

[sp332]

It's not obvious from interacting with the device that your voice data leaves, or that there's any permanent record made of your commands. That's something you have to know ahead of time.

[pault]

What's obvious to tech workers is not obvious to the general population. Most people don't give a second thought to putting all of their communications with friends and family on facebook's unencrypted messenger app (apparently the new version uses E2E encryption but those millions of person-years of chat logs aren't going anywhere).

[astericks]

Exactly what I thought. I imagined it was clear that anything this thing hears can be kept. I bet the terms of use explicitly say that they can, in readable English

[tjoff]

It's not the surprising at all. It is an absolute disgrace though.

Just yet another reminder that GDPR is the bare minimum for something like internet to be tolerable.

[void445be54d48a]

So like probably the majority of useful text boxes everyone types into on the internet. Great news, thanks for the info

[oulipo]

This is why we are building 100% offline and private-by-design Voice AI at https://snips.ai, it is free for makers and works in english, french, german, japanese, spanish, italian, and more coming!

[xiphias2]

I don't see any guarantee that if the platform gets popular and the company acquired, privacy would stay the same. I have seen the same pattern too many times...

[phkahler]

Thank you for that. Voice recognition makes for awesome devices, but we dont need every gadget connected to the net sending our words elsewhere. Keep up the good work!

[parhamn]

Somewhat related: is there a lib or common api for these IFTTT type actions at this point or is everyone building them from scratch?

[jetbooster]

This is exactly what I was looking for and was my only qualm about writing a voice assistant! Will check this out

[j88439h84]

Which voice engine do you use?

[gvand]

Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has shown recently.

[JadeNB]

> Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has shown recently.

I think I'm being clueless, but I can't figure out what this sentence means. Is there a typo in it?

[la_barba]

Which internet company isn't perma-storing any and all 'valuable' bits that happen to be routed through their network?

[mey]

In theory DuckDuckGo. Just because someone can, does not make it good/right.

[vbuwivbiu]

is there a law regarding whether the presence of these bugs should be disclosed when you are a guest in a business premises or someone's home ?

[jtdev]

I can’t believe that people actually pay for these things... Alexa has always seemed like a gimmick to me. I have an Ecobee smart thermostat that has integrated Alexa, which I promptly disabled after installation.

[kowdermeister]

What's wrong with gimmicks? Voice control itself is not a bad idea, the interface to control your technology is something you are born with :)

[NullPrefix]

It's similar to mobility scooters. Made for handicapped, but also popular among the lazy.

[sschueller]

Me too, but now they are even giving them away. Google has offered me a free Google home several times now. Thank you, I don't need your spy device in my home.

[mathgladiator]

So, for me, it is a glorified cooking timer and alarm clock. If I could buy a closed unit that just did that, then I would be happy.

[supergeek133]

I use my voice controls for 3 big reasons daily: 1) Timers (laundry, cooking, etc) 2) Music 3) Smart home stuff

On the 3rd one, voice actually made the smart home easier. To use a smart light bulb you had to unlock your phone, open an app, login, and do your thing. Now I tell my Alexa/Google to do it and it's super easy.

Also the chromecast integration on Google Home is killer "OK google play pandora on TV" or "Play xyz on youtube on tv"

[dalore]

I can't believe people actually pay for mobile phones. They seem like a gimmick to me. My rotary phone works just as well.

[djhaskin987]

This is, while sad and even maddening, obvious.

[r00fus]

It's obvious to anyone who spends a moment thinking about it that some portion of what you say remains.

What's less obvious is that they store everything and most definitely index it so it can be used later against you (all it takes is one legal action - separation, police, you name it).

What's further disappointing is that Amazon stores the transcribed text. Which may be incorrect but deemed "truth".

[rc_kas]

I told alexa to go away. It did not. It just persists on nagging me to say things other than alexa go away

[waplot]

Well color me surprised.

[snowwolf]

In the EU this is a violation of GDPR if true.

[jplayer01]

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Is it not a GDPR violation?

[markjenkinswpg]

ZDNet's article https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-cant-yet-completely-del...

[dang]

Thanks! We'll change to that from https://www.zdnet.com/video/amazon-cant-yet-completely-delet..., which is a video.

[lostmsu]

Needs [video]

[sctb]

Thanks! Updated.

[justizin]

interested to know how much amazon is spending to store hundreds of recordings of me saying, "HDMI1"

[iak8god]

According to this video they're only keeping text transcripts, so... maybe a penny over your entire lifetime.

[cheschire]

I hope a bug doesn’t cause your assistant to accidentally record everything while it’s listening for your prompt.