I found an Amazon folder with thousands of audio recordings from my home gadgets

[rkagerer]

A long time ago I configured Alexa to only keep my audio recordings for 3 months (the shortest option other than None).

Reviewing the settings today I see Amazon added several new classifications of history (e.g. Smart Home Device History, Recorded Sounds History). Rather than respecting / extrapolating my existing choice, they all defaulted to Forever.

These kind of dark patterns are depressing, but I catch a glimmer of hope when I see people like this raising awareness of them.

To me, it's more than just privacy. It's about simple decency. As a developer I've always felt a strong sense of stewardship for the trust my users have placed in me.

[nicolaslem]

I have a similar experience with iOS. I have disabled every settings I could find related to iCloud. It is pretty clear that I don't want my data stored there, and yet every new app or service enables the iCloud integration.

[orcdork]

Linkedin has also been doing this for years - tens upon tens of different "communication preference" options. They keep adding more, or renaming existing ones and defaulting them to on.

[mysterydip]

I wonder if you have the setting to 3 months or none, then later change it to forever, do old recordings suddenly show back up?

[varispeed]

The problem is inability to enforce law when it comes to big corporations. They have enough money to buy entire WH so there is nothing you can do about it apart from just not giving them more money.

[rchaud]

App updates on my phone sometimes silently revert permissions back to defaults.

I just turned auto-updates off after that, and stopped downloading apps for stuff that has a perfectly serviceable website.

[drcongo]

I'm constantly amazed that anyone would willing have an Alexa or Google Home device inside their home. Or anywhere else for that matter.

[Maf1]

Are people still surprised that these devices are capturing information???

[amelius]

Your phone also has a microphone.

[ChainOfFools]

I know someone who is head of critical SRE for a major wall street trading firm (you've definitely heard of them), who has these devices all over their house running everything from window blinds to outdoor accent lighting.

They know very well Amazon is probably listening to and recording every last work spoken in their home, but just cannot see what the big concern is, arguing that Amazon risks massive legal and PR damage if it's ever found out they acted on any information gleaned from his (or anyone's) household audio. I don't understand this risk calculation at all.

[ColinWright]

Quoting from the article:

> ... another joked: “Can someone explain to me why this is ‘scary’? I’m not interesting enough to care if they have my contacts or audio.”

I used to try to explain to people why they should care about companies and governments vacuuming up vast amounts of data indiscriminately, and I get back "It improves my search results ... why should I care?"

I've given up.

[dTal]

Nobody put it better than Snowden:

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

[mint2]

There’s a large number of people who only care about immediate perceived convenience, and don’t think about the implications of a continual slow eroding of privacy/freedom. Privacy really is freedom. They just don’t think anything bad will happen to them personally to have zero privacy, so why should they care? It’s like the race to the bottom type thing with product quality (and more) when people just want the cheapest product

[siva7]

Some people value convenience more over privacy and that is okay. Lots of companies make that way money.

[short12]

In all honesty why should I care? It makes things easier for me. Does my life become somehow worse there are recording aromatically stored. I am not looking for a theoretical scenario. At this moment why should I care?

[amanzi]

To be fair to Amazon, you can get to this page with just two clicks from the home page: https://www.amazon.com/alexa-privacy/apd/home

From there you can get to all the recordings and control how long to retain them for.

[Gigachad]

The fact that this user and and everyone reacting to the news and TikTok video are shocked, it shows that simply having a page is not acceptable and that the average person does not expect this to happen even though they agreed to it in the ToS

[lostmsu]

Here are the last entries in mine: https://hsto.org/getpro/habr/upload_files/e55/14c/903/e5514c...

How do you like it, extreme privacy advocates?

[amelius]

If I visit someone at home who owns Amazon gear, where do I control my privacy settings?

[imdsm]

And for the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/alexa-privacy/apd/home

[fmajid]

It's a GDPR and CCPA/CPRA requirement, they are not doing this out of the goodness and transparency of their heart.

[marapuru]

So, this person is surprised about the amount of data that Amazon collects on her and posts a video about this on _TikTok_? Oh, the irony :)

I do find it praiseworthy that privacy advocates are present on all channels though.

[lrvick]

Am I the only one laughing that this person is trying to advocate for privacy and security on TikTok of all places?

[rchaud]

That's where the audience is. Not the HN audience obviously, but regular people that see Alexa ads and buy the accursed products.

If she were distributing pamphlets, should she avoid doing so in a public square because it has CCTV cameras everywhere?

[dkdbejwi383]

You need to go where you audience is. There's not much point telling people on HN that Amazon stores your data, most of us already know

[atraac]

I understand the irony but you have to admit that TikTok has insane reach, especially to younger people.

[greenail]

There are plenty of good points regarding issues like defaults that you set getting changed and the fact that you are using a device that has to be aware of you speech to function. I agree that we should be aware that we are giving up something in exchange for using any device with a microphone that listens for prompts. Personally I'd rather have an Amazon device on the basis that Amazon doesn't view me as a product (mostly), they view me as a customer and they cherish their customers. It is very deep in the culture they built. Any notion that you might bust the trust of your customers would quickly get squashed within Amazon. This is based on having worked there and having seen this firsthand at the highest levels of the company. The reason I hesitate is that advertising as a business is growing rapidly in Amazon. Advertising puts me in the "product" role which creates a conflict between me as customer and me as product. I sure hope the leadership at Amazon sticks to their guns on the leadership principals. I am also a chrome, android, and gmail user. I'd never use a google voice assistant. This is a bit irrational because the privacy leaking from my browser and email is probably way worse than anything else.

[xtracto]

I've never understood the Alexas and Google homes. People complain about the "1984"cation of our society and houses, and then they literally PAY to have an always on microphone in their homes.

You either dont care about it and buy that stuff, or you care and dont put those devices in your private spaces.

[throwaway0a5e]

> People complain about the "1984"cation of our society and houses, and then they literally PAY to have an always on microphone in their homes.

These are mostly separate groups of people.

[pxtail]

> People complain about the "1984"cation of our society and houses, and then they literally PAY to have an always on microphone in their homes.

They are doing it because they are deep in "Brave New World"ification process and are enjoying it.

[rchaud]

People buy it because it's advertised constantly by two of the biggest corporations on earth.

It's also cheap enough that it gets added to shopping carts, then distributed to friends as gifts.

[insidedivision]

Wow, did they send her wav files? Havn't seen these in a while, thought that if you were to collect millions of audio clips from your customers you would use some compression algorithm, but apparently Amazon does not have to care about such details.

[amelius]

They probably use their own compression internally (not a suitable format for users).

But I'm surprised they didn't send these wav files in extremely high samplerate, to annoy those who request the data.

[robertheadley]

My first thought when I saw this video was that I already knew that this was happening. I suppose the only real answer to this type of problem would be regulation about what information can be stored about a user, and for how long. Make everything more Blunt, as well as put limits in place for how long things like audio clips could be stored, I would vote for 24 hours. I don't reckon that they are being actively used for anything beyond that point anyway.

[INTPenis]

Buy three smart speakers with microphones and several light bulbs and then you get shocked that someone is listening to what you're saying. This is the really shocking part. People need to get educated.

[nathias]

amazon really is the king of dark patterns

[encryptluks2]

Wow, they installed Amazon smart speaker devices and didn't delete the data nor make changes to collection in settings and then is surprised that it exist.

[piva00]

Why do you believe a common user/customer of Amazon's Alexa would know about any of that?

[blitzar]

> She said: “When I downloaded the ZIP file these are all the folders it came with.”

> The TikToker then ...

And just like that I am out.