• About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact
Saturday, July 2, 2022
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
Cyber360 News
  • Home
  • Security
  • Data Breach
  • Cyber Attacks
  • Cyber Security
  • Cyber Crime
  • Contact Us
  • Home
  • Security
  • Data Breach
  • Cyber Attacks
  • Cyber Security
  • Cyber Crime
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Cyber360 News
No Result
View All Result
Home Security

This Is What Amazon Alexa Does With Your Voice Recordings

by Cyber360 News
November 11, 2019
in Security
0
This Is What Amazon Alexa Does With Your Voice Recordings
0
SHARES
1
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

People usually ask their Amazon Echo devices, ‘Alexa, is someone else listening to us?’ Well as it turns out, the answer is yes.

Amazon Alexa, the digital home assistant, gets smarter every day using your voice recording. It happens with the help of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), human workers, and a non-disclosure agreement.

jamf now

Amazon workers around the world, from Romania to India and Costa-Rica, are employed just to listen, curate and annotate other people’s audio clips sent via the Amazon Echo device, according to a report by Bloomberg. This is done in an effort to make Alexa understand the vast number of human languages.

What exactly is Amazon Alexa listening for?

amazon echo buttons

According to one Amazon spokesperson, an extremely small voice sample containing a specific keyword is listened to by Amazon workers.

It is done to make Alexa understand certain phrases, slang, and regional dialect better. Human workers manually annotate voice recordings fed into machine learning algorithms to help Alexa guess the best possible answer for a particular situation.

For example, if someone says, ‘Alexa plays an Eminem song,’ then he means a song from the award-winning rapper Eminem and not a song used in M&M commercials.

Most of the things heard by Amazon workers via short audio clips include everyday mundane tasks. And the entire job is merely a rinse and repeat process.

However, sometimes workers hear way too much for their own good — from a child screaming for help to a crime being committed. Several of these workers have also asked permission to interfere if they hear something wrong is happening on the other side.

jamf now

But no such permission can be granted as Amazon takes the security and privacy of its customers very seriously, says a company official.

What You don’t want to hear!

google home hub

Alexa can only record and send your recordings when it is turned ON via a wake call. People use different wake calls for their Amazon devices. A blue light appears on the cylindrical-shaped device when it is turned ON to signal the same.

What’s disturbing is that several hundred recordings received by Amazon workers were from the instance when Amazon Alexa got turned ‘ON’ on its own or by mistake.

These recordings often include harmless stuff like people singing badly in the shower to an in-progress sexual assault.

What are other companies doing?

Just like Amazon Alexa, there are several other devices like Google Home and Apple Homepod. Almost all speech recognition devices rely on ANN to learn and improve. Apple’s Siri is an example of the same. Employees at Apple also manually curate audio recordings to make Siri smarter in speech recognition every day.

Ironically, at Google, employees are only allowed access to a very small and distorted audio clip that is completely unidentifiable.

Google Duplex digital assistant, revealed at Google I/O conference last year, seems to work better than every other speech recognition software. It talks just like a normal human being and if not told, most people won’t be able to identify it.

jamf now

The main use of Google Duplex digital assistant is booking tables at restaurants. Recently, Google announced that their digital assistant will also come on iOS and other Android devices and not just on Pixel 3.

What if I want privacy?

Amazon Alexa Jumbo iOS App

Yesterday, we told you about an app on iOS called Jumbo. It is a privacy assistant that’s able to automatically clean everything from your old tweets to Tinder recordings. With the help of Jumbo, you can also clear all recordings on your Amazon Echo home device.

The app is only available on iOS and there’s currently no equally better solution for Android.

Also Read: Cloudfare ‘Warp’ Is A New Free VPN Service That Offers Fast Browsing
Cyber360 News

Cyber360 News

Next Post
Cybercrime On Facebook Is Of Least Concern To Its Executives

Cybercrime On Facebook Is Of Least Concern To Its Executives

Recent Posts

Twitch’s Entire Critical Data Leaked, Includes Streamer Earnings, Source Code

Twitch’s Entire Critical Data Leaked, Includes Streamer Earnings, Source Code

October 6, 2021
Former U.S. Security Firm Helped The UAE Carry Out “Karma” iMessage Hack: MIT Tech Review

Former U.S. Security Firm Helped The UAE Carry Out “Karma” iMessage Hack: MIT Tech Review

October 1, 2021
Facing “This App Has Been Blocked For Your Protection” Issue? Here’s How You Can Fix It

Facing “This App Has Been Blocked For Your Protection” Issue? Here’s How You Can Fix It

October 1, 2021

Whats New in Kali Linux?

September 14, 2021

Kali Linux 2019.3 Release (CloudFlare, Kali-status, metapackages, Helper-Scripts & LXD)

September 14, 2021

Kali Linux 2021.3 Release (OpenSSL, Kali-Tools, Kali Live VM Support, Kali NetHunter Smartwatch)

September 14, 2021

Kali Linux 2018.4 Release

September 14, 2021

Kali Linux 1.0.5 and Software Defined Radio

September 14, 2021

Kali Tools Website Launched, 1.0.9 Release

September 14, 2021

Kali Linux Dojo at Black Hat Vegas 2016

September 14, 2021

Category

Site Links

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

About Us

We bring you the best Premium WordPress Themes that perfect for news, magazine, personal blog, etc. Check our landing page for details.

© 2019 Cyber360 News - Powered by WebSensePro

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Security
  • Data Breach
  • Cyber Attacks
  • Cyber Security
  • Cyber Crime
  • Contact Us

© 2019 Cyber360 News - Powered by WebSensePro

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In