How to Keep Your Amazon Echo From Sending Your Conversations to Your Contacts
The internet buzzed yesterday after reports that Portland, Oregon-based Amazon Echo allegedly recorded a “private conversation” and sent it to a “random stranger.” This sounds a lot sinister than what actually happened, and thankfully, there is a trick you can do to prevent this from happening to you.
Before I get into the customization you’ll want to add to your Echo device, let’s go over the facts. Here is a description of the situation from the local news agency KIRO 7 :
… two weeks ago, their love for Alexa changed with a disturbing phone call. “The person on the other line said, ‘Unplug your Alexa devices right now,” she said. “‘You’re being hacked.”
The man was one of her husband’s employees calling from Seattle.
“We turned them all off, and he told us that he got the audio files from our house,” she said. “At first my husband said:“ No, it wasn’t! “And (the recipient of the message) said,” You sat and talked about hardwood floors. ” And we said, “Oh my gosh, you really heard us.”
Scary, isn’t it? And that description was enough to set fire to the pundits on the web , who went into harrowing detail, discussing all the horrible ways Amazon spies on your life, sending your conversations to everyone you know, and moving Alexa to your guest room. (By the way, she wants to rent a car this weekend.)
As reported by Ars Technica , Amazon eventually posted its response to this story based on an analysis of the logs of the Echo device:
Echo is awakened by a word in the background conversation that sounds like “Alexa”. The subsequent conversation was then heard as a “send message” request. At that moment, Alexa said out loud: “To whom?” At this point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, “[contact name], right?” Alexa then interpreted the background conversation as “correct.” As unlikely as this chain of events is, we are looking at options that will make this event even less likely.
What can we learn from all this? Obviously, the Echo device is always listening. It doesn’t record your conversations like a DVR (hopefully), but it’s always on, waiting for that trigger word to spice it up .
However, you were aware of this, and I doubt most of them would trade the convenience of shouting for their Echo devices – or any other smart device – for the hassle of having to physically walk up and press a button in order for it to accept a command.
It’s possible the Echo teams just screwed up – no questions asked. You’ve probably experienced this while talking to your own Echo device, or worse, watching a video of someone saying a word in front of a command that your own device misinterprets as what you said. Annoying? Is always. And, of course, your Echo might think it heard Alexa and then act on other commands it misinterprets, which apparently happened in this case.
Amazon Doesn’t Make It Easy to Disable Certain Echo Features
I don’t want to sound like an apologist for Amazon. I really don’t. I think there are several fundamental flaws in the way Amazon presents privacy concerns as “features”. For example, the entire ” Drop In ” business on your Echo is creepy AF. I’m sure someone was burned there after accidentally giving friends or family members access to their Echo devices and eavesdropping on their lives.
Fortunately, Amazon allows you to turn off Drop In on your Echo devices. However, you can’t turn off calls and messaging — at least not so easily. If someone else uses you as a contact on their phones and you’ve linked your number to an Echo device, they might ask Alexa to call you or send you a message. And once you sync your contacts with the Alexa app, that’s it; you cannot remove them from the app or indicate that you want to allow messaging and calling for a short list of VIPs or family members.
In other words, Amazon has made it easy to set up calling and messaging, but turning them off is incredibly difficult. And that is why situations like the above story will occur: I am sure that the family in question would like to reduce their contacts only to those people with whom they would actually use their Echo to talk. Since they couldn’t do it, and Alexa misinterpreted the name, she sent a voice message (which he believed was recorded) to a contact that these people would never have sent messages to.
How to fix it? You can’t do anything with your contacts in the app – at least after you’ve set it up. I didn’t try to figure out if uninstalling the app, revoking access to my phone’s contacts, reinstalling it, and telling the app not to sync contacts would do anything. This note in the Amazon FAQ makes me think this method would be useless, although it seems to have worked for some :
“ Note. If you have previously used Alexa Calling and Messaging on your Echo device or the Alexa app, your cell phone contacts are automatically imported for Alexa Calling and Messaging on any supported Fire, Android, or iOS tablet. ”
You can always block contacts, but this only prevents them from calling or writing to you, and not vice versa.
Call Amazon to prevent Echo from sending random messages
The only way to really delete my contacts and the Echo calling and messaging features is the most reverse method I can think of: call Amazon customer service (877-375-9365) and ask the agent to deregister the service. on your device. It’s a clumsy process and will take about ten minutes (depending on the number of calls), but it works. (To re-enable its features, you’ll have to call Amazon again.)
I think it’s silly that you can block calls and messaging in the app if you use Amazon FreeTime so your kids can play with your Echo without causing havoc, but you can’t just block calls and messaging like normal adult, with real privacy concerns. User choice is great, Amazon.