[ghaff]

I assume you don't use a smartphone, for the sake of consistency. It's really hard for me to draw a distinction between home voice assistants that you can activate via a voice command and smartphones that you can activate via a voice command.

[cheerlessbog]

For voice assistants to be misused only takes malicious intent or incompetence on the server end since they hear and transmit (Perhaps with activation phrase) by design.

For my smartphone to be similarly vulnerable I would need the server side plus malicious or incompetent intervention on the client end to enable voice activation (I have voice activation disabled).

Plus my smartphone hardware is not as capable of picking up voices around the house plus I am not actively positioning it in several rooms to do so.

[mixmastamyk]

Siri and location services are the first things I turn off.

[ghaff]

You're still trusting Apple to actually turn them off. I have zero reason to doubt Apple on this. However, I also have zero reason to think Alexa is transmitting even if it hasn't been woken up with the wake word.

[mixmastamyk]

We can't know everything for sure in this world, it's true. However, Apple has taken a stance on privacy, Amazon hasn't, and has made a name for itself in how it treats folks and where it prioritizes profit.

Now, I don't think they have mics on all the time either, as it would be impractical. But rest assured they are vacuuming up every morsel of information they can for monetization reasons. And law enforcement has been banging on the door to get access. After the next tragedy they will get through.

[brokenmachine]

> And law enforcement has been banging on the door to get access. After the next tragedy they will get through.

Law enforcement wants access to Alexa devices? I don't doubt they do, but can you cite examples of them trying? What kind of tragedy are you alluding to?

[sib]

Echo devices (with Alexa) also have explicit mic mute buttons, plus a UI that indicates when the mics are off, which my phone does not.

(And yes, you have to trust that Amazon's devices are behaving according to spec and to what Amazon has said...)

[14]

Same. Also Cortana or any other thing like it which is really sad seeing how useful they could be. To have to choose convenience or privacy sucks. I wish there was a middle ground. I would happily pay for a voice assistant that lives on my machine and respects my privacy.

[mixmastamyk]

Agreed, but to be honest I probably wouldn't use them even without the privacy implications. Would rather do a few taps than carefully craft a sentence that might not be understood.

[llamataboot]

A smartphone you generally have to pick up and talk into - by their nature home VAs are just always-on microphones all over your house.

[JohnFen]

I can't activate my smartphone with a voice command. And even if I could, I firewall everything off by default anyway.

[brokenmachine]

How do you firewall your phone? What OS?