Amazon Alexa sent a womans private conversation to employee

Amazon Alexa sent a womans private conversation to employeeAmazon Alexa sent a womans private conversation to employeeYou may want to think twice about having sensitive conversations in front of yur Alexa. The smart speaker may have a mind of its own. A woman in Portland, Oregon, said she feels invaded after herbei voice-controlled Amazon Echo sent a private conversation with her husband to her husbands employee without her knowledge.Im never plugging that device in again, because I cant trust itMy husband and I would joke and say, Id bet behauptung devices are listening to what were saying, a woman who only identified herself by her first name, Danielle, told Seattle-based news station KIRO 7.According to Danielle, she got a call one day from her husbands employee, who warned her to Unplug your Alexa devices right now, she said. Youre being hacked, she was told.The employee, who lived 76 miles away in Seattle, had received an audio recording of a private conversation between the couple abouthardwood floors.Before the incident, Danielle had Amazon Echo devices in every room of her home to control heat, lights, and the house security system. But after what happened, she does not want to outsource these tasks to a mind she does not feel she can fully control. A talk about home improvement is one thing - but what if it had been a more embarrassing, intimate conversation?I felt invaded, Danielle said. A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, Im never plugging that device in again, because I cant trust it. Alexa is the voice-powered assistant that lives inside Amazon Echo devices. When it hears its programmed name, which is typically Alexa, it will start listening in, waiting for your request, such as, Alexa, call my assistant. According to Amazon, Danielle was not hacked. Alexa just misheard her request. Amazon said in a statement thatEcho woke up due to a word in hintergrund conversation sounding like Alexa, and the next conversation was heard as send me ssage. Then, when Alexa said out loud, To whom?, the device interpreted the background conversation as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then responded, Contact name, right? Alexa again interpreted the background conversation as, Right.Alexa had wrongly interpreted words in the couples talk as a command.Amazon said this was an extremely rare occurrence that it was taking steps to make sure would not happen again.But for those of us who do not want to put our trust in a device that can broadcast our private conversations to our employees, an extremely rare occurrence may not be rare enough.