Today we are going to see what data Amazon collects about the questions we ask them and to what extent they use that information to their advantage.
Alexa listens to us constantly
The first thing you have to know is something that I don’t think needs to be said, and that is that the Echo is constantly listening to us, so when we say “Alexa” it responds to us, since its microphones are open 24 hours a day.
We can verify it in a very simple way, we will only have to enter the Alexa App > More > Activity History. And there we will see (and listen to) all the audios that he has recorded about us.
This would not be a problem if privacy were real, that only we had access to it, however it is not, and several studies show that if we talk about a topic that we have never done before, we will begin to see ads on Amazon related to it. Something that dismantles the theory of the company itself that, Are our data encrypted?
It is possible that they are, and that no worker can access our conversations (or so we hope) however, at no time do they notify us (except in the fine print that nobody reads on their 40 pages) that they will use our information for the purposes that they want
It must be said that sometimes it is not as bad as we think and some curious news makes us think positive, since, in some trials, Alexa’s recordings have been able to prove that a person was at home at a particular time. Curious right?
The fact is that we cannot know to what extent they use us, since their privacy conditions are not clear and they force us to accept things that we have no idea about. They can sell our data, use it to show us personalized ads and whatever they want. The law only requires them to be robots who have access to this and never a humanTherefore, the question is, do you care that a machine shows targeted advertising to you as long as a person does not know what you are saying, or, on the contrary, do you see any action on the part of a product for which you already have we paid?
We would like to know everything behind it, since each country has some laws regarding this and we do not know if Amazon complies with them 100% or has its own general law adapted to everyone. What we do know is that every day we have more devices that sometimes know more about us than we do ourselves. So be careful what you say. They are able to guess who you are and differentiate which person is speaking, in order to show you advertising depending on whether you are the owner of the account or a simple guest. If you don’t believe me, just say “Alexa, who am I?” I let you discover it.
