Speaker 1: Just how did Alexa record a conversation and send it
Speaker 1: to a contact? What's going on? I'm Rich Damiro. This
Speaker 1: is rich on Tech Daily. It's one of the biggest
Speaker 1: setbacks yet for smart speakers. A new story out of
Speaker 1: Seattle that and Alexa secretly recorded a couple's conversation then
Speaker 1: sent it to one of their contacts. So how did
Speaker 1: this happen? Let's break it down like you. When I
Speaker 1: first heard about the story, I was intrigued. The headlines
Speaker 1: says it all woman says her Amazon device recorded private conversation,
Speaker 1: sent it out to a random contact. Then I watched
Speaker 1: the segment, which was done by a local news station
Speaker 1: in Seattle, and I was kind of confused. I really
Speaker 1: wanted to know how this could happen. The statement Amazon
Speaker 1: gave the station was pretty light on facts, but then
Speaker 1: the big blogs picked up on it and they got
Speaker 1: a better statement from Amazon, which said Echo woke up
Speaker 1: due to a word in the background conversation that sounded
Speaker 1: like Alexa. Then they heard send a message request, at
Speaker 1: which point Alexa said to whom, to which the background
Speaker 1: conversation was interpreted as a name in the contact list.
Speaker 1: Then Alexa said the customer's name out right, Alexa interpreted
Speaker 1: in another background conversation as right and as unlikely as
Speaker 1: this string of events is, said Amazon, we are evaluating
Speaker 1: options to make this case even less likely. All right?
Speaker 1: So what that all means? The issue stems from a
Speaker 1: feature on the Echo called Alexa Calling and Messaging, which
Speaker 1: means you can send voice messages to others who use
Speaker 1: messaging with Alexa on their Echo. So how does that
Speaker 1: work well? For starters? When you open the Amazon Alexa
Speaker 1: app on your phone for the very first time, it
Speaker 1: asks you if it can have access to all of
Speaker 1: your address book contacts. Most people just say yes, and
Speaker 1: when you do, Alexa imports all of your contacts. This
Speaker 1: makes it easy for her to send messages or place
Speaker 1: a phone call using Alexa as a speakerphone. According to
Speaker 1: Amazon support page, to send a message to someone in
Speaker 1: this case, this recorded private conversation, here's what you say.
Speaker 1: You say, Alexa send a message to the contacts name.
Speaker 1: If the name is similar to other contacts in your
Speaker 1: address book, Alexa will repeat the name back for you
Speaker 1: to confirm. Once you confirm the name, Alexa prompts you
Speaker 1: for the message. When you finish talking Alexa sends your
Speaker 1: voice message. Now, I tried this on my Echo and
Speaker 1: realized a big part of this is that the person
Speaker 1: on the other end also has to have an Echo
Speaker 1: with the messaging feature enabled. In this case, it was
Speaker 1: an employee of the husband in the couple, So I'm
Speaker 1: guessing they mentioned this person's name or something that sounded
Speaker 1: like his name. Alexa tried to confirm. The couple didn't notice,
Speaker 1: said something that Alexa construed as a confirmation, went on
Speaker 1: with their conversation. Alexa recorded it, then sent it off
Speaker 1: to the guy, who then called the couple and said,
Speaker 1: you're being hacked. Now, a lot of things did go
Speaker 1: wrong here for this particular case to happen, but the
Speaker 1: bottom line is this Alexa with all smart speakers, they
Speaker 1: mishear commands all the time. I see my Google Home
Speaker 1: slide up when I'm not saying the hot word. But
Speaker 1: there's also a bigger problem here. You would think that
Speaker 1: to prevent this from happening in the future, you would
Speaker 1: just be able to disable the messaging feature completely, or
Speaker 1: if you can't do that, delete the contacts out of
Speaker 1: your Alexa app so Alexa can't call them or message them.
Speaker 1: But guess what. You can't do either of these things easily.
Speaker 1: To disable the messaging feature or delete your contacts off
Speaker 1: Amazon servers. Both of these things require a phone call
Speaker 1: or at least a chat with Amazon's customer service team,
Speaker 1: and that is the real problem here. Once Alexa imports
Speaker 1: your contacts, you really can't pry them out of her
Speaker 1: virtual hands. Amazon needs to change this asap, and I
Speaker 1: assume they're going to do that very soon, or at
Speaker 1: least give people some sort of easy way to toggle
Speaker 1: messaging with Alexa on and off. Some mistakes like this
Speaker 1: don't happen again. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
Speaker 1: If you like what I'm doing here, please leave me
Speaker 1: a review in the Apple Podcasts app. That way more
Speaker 1: people discover the podcast. I'm Rich Tamiro. You can find
Speaker 1: links to everything I talk about here. Plus, if you
Speaker 1: want to see my video demo of the Alexa messaging feature,
Speaker 1: just go to richon tech dot tv. I'm Rich Samiro.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you real soon.