Gary Horcher reports:
A Portland, Oregon, family contacted Amazon to investigate after they say a private conversation in their home was recorded by Amazon’s Alexa – the voice-controlled smart speaker – and the recorded audio was sent to the phone of a random person in Seattle, who was in the family’s contact list.
[…]
But Danielle said that two weeks ago, the family’s love for Alexa changed with an alarming phone call. “The person on the other line said, ‘Unplug your Alexa devices right now,'” she said. “‘You’re being hacked.'”
KIRO-TV contacted Amazon with to-be-predicted questions about the incident. Amazon sent a response that did not explain anything. It merely declared it “an extremely rare occurrence,” and that Amazon was “taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future.”
Read more on Fox13. This is actually a nightmare for Amazon if it becomes more widely known that this happened, because Amazon is not explaining how it happened or how many others it could be happening to right now without their knowledge. Would YOU feel safe talking around Alexa if you didn’t know whether a recording of your convo might be sent to a random contact? I wouldn’t, but then, I wouldn’t have Alexa connected in my house to begin with.