smart speaker

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smart speaker is a voice interaction hardware device that answers various queries via an internet-based centralized service like Amazon Echo or Google Home; from an indieweb perspective, it is possible to use your own website instead like Benbot.

Criticism

Continuous Surveillance

• 2017-10-12 Business Insider: The Google Home Mini secret-recording fiasco is a major black eye at the worst possible time for Google

  … a reviewer discovered the device was quietly recording his conversations without his knowledge or consent

• 2017-10-10 Android Police: Google is permanently nerfing all Home Minis because mine spied on everything I said 24/7

Subvertable

• 2017-04-12 The Verge: Burger King’s new ad forces Google Home to advertise the Whopper

See Also

• Benbot
• surveillance
• Ok boomer: https://twitter.com/gnat/status/1191600041040863232
  • ""OK Boomer" only works on Boomers from Google. If your Boomer is from Apple, you have to say "Hey, Boomer." If it's from Amazon, you can simply preface your instruction with "Boomer", e.g. "Boomer, stop."" @gnat November 5, 2019
• 2019-12-11 Bloomberg: Silicon Valley Is Listening to Your Most Intimate Moments

  How the world’s biggest companies got millions of people to let temps analyze some very sensitive recordings.

• 2020-08-06 The Independent: Google accidentally enables Home smart speakers to listen in to everyday house sounds

  Users have received notifications when their Google Home speakers hear smoke alarms or breaking glass

• 2020-08-23 WIRED: Meet the Star Witness: Your Smart Speaker

  Earlier this month, Amazon said it had received more than 3,000 requests from police for user data in the first half of this year, and complied almost 2,000 times.

  (also tweeted https://twitter.com/WIRED/status/1297594731392831491 deleted but still archived https://web.archive.org/web/20200823180141/https://twitter.com/WIRED/status/1297594731392831491)
• 2020-12-14 The Verge: Google discontinues the Google Home Max
• IoT
• Criticism of Siri: 2019-07-26 The Guardian: Apple contractors 'regularly hear confidential details' on Siri recordings / Workers hear drug deals, medical details and people having sex, says whistleblower
• 2022-10-14 https://twitter.com/OneRadChee/status/1581053363348598785

  "this is the dumbest cyberpunk dystopia" @OneRadChee

• Criticism: 2023-03-23 The NUIT Attack Uses Near-Ultrasound Audio to Silently Command Your Voice Assistant / By embedding commands in YouTube videos, streaming music, or even voice calls and Zoom meetings, NUIT can silently take control.
• Issue: 2023 go reset all your Amazon smart speaker things and the accounts that access them: https://sackheads.social/@Cloudguy/110256209708866473
  • "For those who trust me:Goto your Amazon account, sign out of all your devices, everything, everywhere all your Echos (yes I know it's a pain), reset your password, delete 2FA and any tokens and reset them. Now.That doesn't include Fido / Yubikeys but does include Auth tokens.Do it now.As much a pain as it is to reset Echo and all smart devices, trust me, please do it.I can't tell you more yet, but I am being ethical and you need to actually realise I have a clue.It's been a scary day" @Cloudguy April 24, 2023
• ^ weird follow-up to this that seems to walk (most of) it back? https://sackheads.social/@Cloudguy/110266623308736694
  • "To be very clear.As a journalist I like to ensure that anyone from a news outlet states the facts as best they are able. Or a puff piece is exactly that.At no point have anyone's credentials, or security from an authentication perspective been at risk. Period. I have been very very clear on this from minute one. Echo devices and Alexa devices as I have very very clearly said are not at risk, a vector, an issue or a threat.The issues at hand are being dealt with by Amazon admirably." @Cloudguy April 26, 2023