Alexa, Amazon's assistant, has gone off the deep end. A German user has had access to more than 1.700 audio files generated by the assistant, something that could be normal if you were reviewing your own history, however, the recordings belonged to someone else who was completely unknown to you.
Amazon says this is a one-off human error
The story begins when a user asks Amazon for all the logs recorded by their Alexa-enabled devices. These records let you know what audios and what information is stored on Amazon's servers, something that, of course, you accept when you start using the assistant. But putting aside what Amazon does or doesn't have on you, the bottom line is that if, given that we trust Amazon won't use your data in any weird way, could someone have access to your data? to those recordings?
The answer from the giant is a resounding no, however, this user has had a horrible experience that could raise panic among those who trust Alexa. After requesting the data, he received an email from the technical support with a link from which he could download all the records. The file contained, in addition to a search log from Amazon, more than 1.700 recordings in WAV format, however, the surprise came when he began to reproduce them.
spying on a stranger
All the downloaded files belonged to another person, to be exact a couple. As the media has learned Heise In an interview with the affected person, the audio files contained so much useful information that he was able to intuit that the users were a couple who used Alexa in more than one location, and that at least they had one Echo at home and a Fire TV connected to the television. Commands from the shower, control of a thermostat and even management of various household appliances are some of the details that have been extracted by listening only to the recordings.
So much scary information
There are times when we need to see cases that are foreign to us in order to contemplate the true danger of things, and that is just what you are probably thinking on this occasion. The naturalness with which these users used Alexa has allowed this other user to know their exact location (when using transport services managed by Alexa), their names, and even the first and last names of some of their friends (when sending messages or doing calls to a contact list record).
Amazon has not made any official statements, and the only thing it has done so far is give explanations to the person who received the data (for now it is unknown if the people spied on are aware of what happened). According to the giant, the problem is due to an extraordinary human error, a specific failure that will rarely happen again. The problem in this case is not human error itself, which can always occur, but that a system with such sensitive information has processes that can give rise to this type of error.
It is clear that the case will give a lot to talk about, so we will be attentive to see how it evolves and if Alexa receives any reprimand for what happened.