The report, from researchers affiliated with the University of Washington, UC Davis, UC Irvine, and Northeastern University, states that Amazon (and third parties) collect data from Alexa interactions and share it with as many as 41 advertising partners. In April 2022, a report went live declaring that Amazon uses voice data from Alexa interactions to serve targeted ads. However, just because - officially, at least - Amazon isn't listening in so it can bombard you with targeted ads from your regular conversations in earshot of an Alexa speaker, that doesn't mean that tailored ads aren't part of the Alexa setup. This is all legal, as you agree to this when you accept the terms and conditions - remember to always read the fine print, kids. That’s not to say our digital devices don’t listen to our conversations in order to market products and services it thinks we might be interested in.īack in 2017, The New York Times reported on some software - dubbed Alphonso - contained within some Android games, that collected TV data for advertisers, by listening to what was playing on their televisions. However, there’s no evidence that your Amazon speakers are listening in with the objective of presenting you with personalized adverts and the like. Smart home privacy: What Amazon, Google and Apple do with your data Websites use cookies to present personalized adverts to users based on their previous browsing history, so it makes perfect sense for these sorts of adverts to be presented. The obvious answer to this situation is that, prior to the dinner conversation, the couple had been looking and researching camping-related articles and products online - even if they don’t remember doing so. One of the biggest theories you’ll find online regarding Alexa listening revolves around digital adverts being presented to a user after they have had a conversation about a subject within earshot of their smart speakers.įor example, a couple has a discussion over dinner about what equipment they’ll need before their weekend camping trip, and, lo and behold, the soon-to-be campers are bombarded with adverts on websites and social networks about tents, stoves and sleeping bags. What about adverts appearing after talking about certain products? all other audio passes through the device until the wake word is ‘caught’ and sent to Amazon’s secure cloud, where your request is reanalyzed to verify the wake word was spoken.” The good news is - despite what conspiracy theories exist - Amazon, nor Alexa, is spying on you.Īmazon uses technology it calls ‘keyword spotting’ to listen out for your wake word.Īmazon states that “Echo devices are designed by default to detect only the sound waves of your chosen wake word, and everything else is ignored. You can, of course, disable the microphone on your smart speaker and make it so that you need to push a button to activate Alexa… but that’s not really the point of having a voice assistant on hand, is it? If your Echo speaker wasn’t always listening there’s no way it would hear your commands starting “Alexa” (or another word if you’ve changed the Alexa wake word). Or, rather, the microphone on your Alexa smart speaker is always active (by default, at least) and is constantly monitoring voices in your home in order to hear its wake word. The short answer is yes, Alexa is always listening to you. If you own an Alexa smart speaker - whether it's a cheap Echo Dot, a high-end Echo Studio, or even a third-party Alexa speaker like the Sonos One - you may have wondered from time to time: “Is Alexa always listening to me?”
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