Amazon Alexa Sends Family's Private Conversation to Contact

Having a private conversation? You might want to step away from your Amazon smart speaker.

A family in Portland says their Amazon Echo recently recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random person on their contact list. "My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying," the woman, identified as Danielle, told Seattle news station KIRO 7.

According to the report, the family had outfitted every room in their home with an Echo device so they could control their heat, lights, and security system with Alexa voice commands. Two weeks ago, Danielle received a disturbing call from one of her husband's employees.

"The person ... said, 'unplug your Alexa devices right now,'" Danielle said. "'You're being hacked.'"

The man on the other end of the line informed the family that he had received audio files of a conversation about hardwood floors seemingly recorded inside their home without their knowledge. Danielle called Amazon, which reportedly investigated the incident, confirmed what happened, and apologized profusely.

"They said 'our engineers went through your logs, and they saw exactly what you told us… and we're sorry,'" the woman told KIRO 7. "He apologized like 15 times in a matter of 30 minutes and he said we really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, this is something we need to fix!"

Amazon did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment, but a spokesperson explained what happened to Wired:

"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer's contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right.'"

Amazon told Wired it is "evaluating options to make this case even less likely." Wired likened the incident to "the Echo equivalent of a butt-dial."

The incident comes after some Alexa device users recently reported hearing random laughter from the virtual assistant. Amazon said the creepy giggles occurred because the virtual assistant mistakenly heard the phrase "Alexa, laugh," and promised to fix the problem.

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