[stryk]

No, I don't realize. And neither should you, because you honestly cannot. It runs closed-source software and communicates with servers out of your control. Unless you are an engineer who works for Amazon directly in the smart-gadget department there is no way you could positively know with certainty.

Amazon isn't providing these devices out of the kindness of their hearts. They are a for-profit enterprise, they do not care about making your life "easier" -- they want your money. They do not give a damn about anything else, and I do not believe that it's overly-paranoid to say that if you think otherwise then you're fooling yourself. It has been proven time and time again that if a thing can be abused by others for their own gain then they will be, almost without fail. Be it the government, a company, an individual, whatever.

Amazon has already done the hard work by getting the device into your home (which you paid them to do. and walked it into your own front door yourself). It's a marketers wet dream, and we all know -- or, at least we should know by now -- how sleazy marketing is. Do you really trust them to not use that always-on microphone? Do you actually trust that they are deleting any "non-relevant" data, or even keeping the 'relevant" data safe and out of the hands of others? I do not. You shouldn't either.

It has always baffled me the things people are willing to be duped out of under such a simple guise as "convenience". I've never been able to wrap my head around it. And I refuse to buy into the defeatist attitude of "privacy is an illusion" -- that's a load of crap.

[grkvlt]

> They are a for-profit enterprise, they do not care about making your life "easier" -- they want your money.

Interestingly, one way they can get my money is by making my life easier. And I'm not the only one who is happy to pay for that. In which case it makes perfect sense for them to care very much about making my life easier, as it is essential to their profits...