everything you say to your echo/alexa has always been sent to amazon.
theres literally been leaks proving it.
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
1404 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
66465 readers
4046 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Who the hell is the manufacture to decide if a remote feature no longer functions? (I'm guessing people don't rent these devices from Amazon - it's your property).
I don't need your concent, it's in your best interests - Amazon
Duh. This why no one should have this tech as the arbiters can never be trusted with public saftey/good.
If Corporations were people, they'd be disappeared in the night for stuff like this.
Which is why they're not people.
Why anyone would want some Tech company spybot sifting through their private experiences is beyond me, but that's definitely what they are doing.
Which is why they're not people.
But the C-suite and board are almost like humans. And that's even better for... things.
There's no way they weren't doing this already.
I mean if they were doing this already there would be no point in sending this email out. They would have just happily continued letting people think it wasn’t happening while doing it anyway, while not having to deal with the backlash this will generate.
My suspicion is they probably need to announce it now for some legal reason but there's no Amazon device with the power to do this locally so it's definitely always been sent to them.
Now would they delete that right away or analyse it first, I kinda think they would have always done the latter.
I mean there’s no legal reason that would exist now that didn’t before.
My guess is that they did honor the setting, but that was because the amount of people that used it was so low vs the total number of people that used the devices. Now with smart speaker adoption rates declining, and their desire to train AI, they have to dip into the pool of people that opted not to share.
The setting mentioned in the email was on by default. So they definitely were, they're just removing the ability to turn it off.
Great, they made it public.
If you were using one, you were already okay with this.
My parents have an Alexa and I have no choice in whether they install one in our house or not. I doubt they would be convinced by my pleas about privacy. So unfortunately and reduction in whatever privacy that was left is a shame.
Which Pinevox or Openvoice may be an alternative one day. I think I recall HomeAssistant had something in the works too.
For anyone with existing Home Assistant setup, the Home Assistant Voice Preview is pretty good alternative, when it comes to voice control of HA. The setup is very easy. If you want conversational functionality, you could even hook it up to an LLM, cloud or local. It can also be used for media playback and it's got an aux out port.
I used to use Google Home Mini for voice control of Home Assistant. The Voice Preview replaced that rather nicely.
The difference between a pi and open voice?
I'm using a Pi Zero as a voice satellite with an additional mic hat and a speaker hanging off the audio output and it's ... ok
There's definitely much lower WAF with this option
The voice assistant has built-in audio which appears to be high (enough) quality and considering it's case, power, etc, not to mention funding the advancement of open source voice control, it's just overall “better”
If you've got a Pi lying around with a mic & speaker, definitely give it a go
WAF? Wow and flutter?
Wife approval factor
No idea, haven't used those. The HA Voice is open source through and through.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Yeah, just avoid the oligarchy tech
I agree. Although it’s nearly impossible at this point. Especially with Amazon running a significant portion of the internet with AWS. Each one of us most likely touches an Amazon server multiple times a day, even if we don’t have any Amazon subscriptions.
That doesn't matter. You only need to worry about boycotting things within your control, like Amazon shopping and their consumer products. AWS is profitable, but so is Amazon.com.
Buying something at a different store is always a dub even if that store is using AWS on the backend.
Like the other person said, you can at least control what you interact with directly. So you cancel your Prime subscription and turn your lights with your hand instead of an Echo but you don’t worry so much about trying to figure out if any of the several companies involved in making [product] have some form of attachment to AWS.
And there will be some level of consumption in this horrible system that’s not gunna be good in order for you to not be horribly depressed but people can shed more than they think and alternatives do exist for many of the ones you might put at lower priority.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Alexa! Install Linux!
🔴 I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that.
alexa! install an oligarchy!
Definitely not a complete FOSS setup but I decided to go the Apple route a self-hosted Homebridge for non Apple home-kit enabled devices.
Amazon really got people to pay to be spied on. Wild world we live in bois
load more comments
(7 replies)
If you do not want to set your voice recordings setting to 'Don't save recordings,' please follow these steps before March 28th:
Am I the only one curious to know what these steps are? The image cuts off the rest of the email.
- Unplug your amazon echo devices
- Hit it with a hammer
- Send it to an electronics recycler
If anyone else is wondering, I’ve not found a verbatim quote of the steps but I did see an article that mentioned the consequences. It seems like you will be able to turn this off but it will disable Voice ID:
anyone with their Echo device set to “Don’t save recordings” will see their already-purchased devices’ Voice ID feature bricked. Voice ID enables Alexa to do things like share user-specified calendar events, reminders, music, and more. Previously, Amazon has said that "if you choose not to save any voice recordings, Voice ID may not work." As of March 28, broken Voice ID is a guarantee for people who don't let Amazon store their voice recordings.
load more comments
(1 replies)
They literally could just leave the feature on the device, but then you can't force your users to send you all their data, voices, thoughts and first borns
Fuck Amazon, fuck Bezos
Want to setup a more privacy friendly solution?
Have a look at Home Assistant! It’s a great open source smart home platform that recently released a local (so not processing requests in the cloud) voice assistant. It’s pretty neat!
load more comments
(4 replies)
I have always told people to avoid Amazon.
They have doorbells to watch who comes to your house and when.
Indoor and outdoor security cameras to monitor when you go outside, for how long, and why.
They acquired roomba, which not only maps out your house, but they have little cameras in them as well, another angle to monitor you through your house in more personal areas that indoor cameras might not see.
They have the Alexa products meant to record you at all times for their own use and intent.
Why do you think along with Amazon Prime subscriptions you get free cloud storage, free video streaming, free music? They are categorizing you in the most efficient and accurate way possible.
Boycott anything Amazon touches
load more comments
(4 replies)
view more: next ›