Family's Amazon Echo Recorded Conversation, Sent It to an Acquaintance


An Oregon family had a private conversation unknowingly recorded by their Amazon Echo and sent by it to an acquaintance, Amazon revealed yesterday (May 24th), blaming it on what it called an unlikely string of events. The family found out about it when one of the husband's employees contacted them and said he thought their Echo had been hacked, because he'd gotten an audio file of them talking about hardwood floors. Amazon explained that the Echo first misinterpreted a word in background conversation as "Alexa," which wakes it up, and then misinterpreted the conversation as a "send message" request. Alex said, "To whom?", and again misinterpreted background conversation for a name in the family's contact list. It said the contact's name and asked, "Right"?, and yet again misinterpreted background conversation for the response, "Right." The family contacted Amazon after they found out what had happened, and the company said in a statement yesterday, "As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."


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