[anon9001]

How is that ironic? I don't want people associating this account with my real life identity, so I made it separate and access it differently than other identifiable services.

That's the whole point that I'm trying to make. Identify if listening devices are actually a threat to you. Assess the area and see if a listening device would be appropriate before adding it. For most people, who are very insecure anyway, one more listening device is not going to have any significant impact on their threat level.

If anything, what we need is more training available on how they can assess the threats against them in a rational way. And, if they choose, how to mitigate the risks posed by those threats. Sometimes that will include removing listening devices, but for most people, that won't be their largest threat.

[keyle]

I don't understand your argument. Are you pro-listening devices in people's home?

If you could have Alexa that doesn't listen to everything you say and offers the same service without the analytics, treating every request as a blank slate, wouldn't that be better in every possible way?

[anon9001]

I'm pro-security-awareness.

Sometimes it is convenient to have an internet-connected device that knows all of your preferences. You'll get better answers to your queries that way, and they'll be more personalized to you. That's ok, and I don't think it's something that should be completely rejected.

Google has been personalizing search for years, and that's ok too, because it probably is better for most users. But users also need to know about DDG and private browsing, so they can see unbiased results when they want.

> If you could have Alexa that doesn't listen to everything you say and offers the same service without the analytics, treating every request as a blank slate, wouldn't that be better in every possible way?

It would be worse in almost all ways except privacy. There's an expectation that when I ask for the weather, I mean at my current location. Or if I ask for sports scores, it knows what teams I care about. And most importantly, it should learn and get smarter over time, which you couldn't do with the type of device you propose.

I'd personally rather have areas with absolutely no devices and areas that are essentially public. I can see how some people would want a middle-ground with listening devices but with more privacy than Alexa. That might be possible, but if that's my concern, I'd rather just not have the microphone in the room at all. I think the market for privacy-vetted always-on microphones is small.