PORTLAND, Ore. (WSVN) — A family in Oregon wants answers from Amazon after they say their Echo device recorded a private conversation in their home and shared it with someone nearly 200 miles away.
An audio recording of a couple’s conversation inside their Portland home was sent to someone in their contact list who lives in Seattle, according to KIRO.
The woman, who did not want to be identified, told the news outlet that one of her husband’s employees received the recording and immediately reached out to warn them that they had been hacked.
“The person on the other line said ‘unplug your Alexa devices right now. You’re being hacked,’” the woman said.
The couple did not initially believe it, until the man recounted their conversation that they believed was private.
“We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house,” she told the station. “At first, my husband was, like, ‘no you didn’t!’ And [he] said, ‘You sat there talking about hardwood floors.’ And we said, ‘oh gosh, you really did hear us.'”
The man then sent the recordings to the couple so they could hear it for themselves.
The woman said the incident left her feeling invaded. She said she’ll never plug the device in again.
The family contacted Amazon but an engineer could not provide them with an explanation of what caused the issue.
“We really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, this is something we need to fix,” the engineer said, according to the family.
Amazon released a statement from a spokesperson that reads, “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.’ As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.”
The family is looking to get a refund for their device.
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