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It doesn’t take much to order a dollhouse mansion and four pounds of sugar cookies with an Amazon Echo
In an ironic turn of events, Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa, is turning out to be quite a terrible listener (or perhaps it has some things to learn). While ordering your favorite pizza pie and streaming catchy tunes are no-brainers for the voice-activated speaker, Alexa has suddenly been engaging in some unintentional shopping sprees.
An Amazon Echo waiting for a voice command. Image source: Amazon.
Although children ordering items from gadgets is nothing new, voice-activated devices are stirring up these types of problems that parents will have to be on the lookout for.
One recent incident occurred in Dallas, TX earlier this month, when a six-year-old asked her family’s new Amazon Echo, “Can you play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?” The device complied, ordering a $150 KidKraft Sparkle mansion dollhouse, in addition to “four pounds of sugar cookies.” The girl’s parents figured out what happened and have since added a code to make any purchases.
This story could have stopped right there, but after making a local morning show on San Diego’s CW6 News, Echo owners who were watching the broadcast found that the remark triggered orders on their own devices.
It goes without saying that this dollhouse incident is proof that Alexa is always listening. The device begins recording whenever it hears the word “Alexa,” recording sound for up to 60 seconds each time. While helpful, this feature borders on invading privacy and has fanned overall security concerns that surround the rise of IoT devices.
Though encrypted logs of the recordings are kept on Amazon’s servers, the device’s microphone can be turned off, and recordings can be deleted manually from the account.
For those of you with little ones and an Amazon Echo, know that Alexa’s settings can be adjusted through the device’s app. Users can also either turn off voice ordering altogether, or add a passcode to prevent accidental purchases.
Source: The Verge