Was I hallucinating? Totally OT, perhaps relevant

[prothero at earthlearningsolutions.org]

My only contact with Alexa was at Christmas, 2 yrs ago. I don’t activate “hey, Siri” on any of my devices. I’ll have to check my Kindle Fire, tho but I’m pretty sure I didn’t turn it on.

I’ll update this group if I find anything interesting.
Best,
Bill

William Prothero
http://es.earthednet.org

> On Nov 8, 2017, at 11:23 AM, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> prothero wrote:
> 
> > ...this did get me thinking about the spyware developed to listen in
> > on people’s smart phone microphone without the owner being logged in. > Especially by intelligence agencies, but who would be interested in a
> > retire Santa Barbara faculty member. I will get on bitdefender’s list
> > with this question.
> 
> Please let us know what you find.
> 
> There's quite a controversy going on about how much of one's personal conversations the Facebook app listens to.
> 
> But there's no question that all voice-activated systems (Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Corana, Google's voice navigation) must listen at all times in order to be able to know when you call them by name.
> 
> It wouldn't be possible for them to do what they do without an always-on mic connected to the Internet.
> 
> At least Google (hopefully all of them) provides a place in account settings to hear the last several clips it sent to their server to try to determine if you were actually activating the voice service or just talking to someone in the room.
> 
> Once I listened to those clips, I was momentarily relieved to find nothing there of any particular interest, just me talking to my wife about shopping, with a friend in line at a movie, with my father-in-law over breakfast.
> 
> But right afterward I turned it off.  Never regretted it.  I only really used it in my car, and I'd driven for decades without it so I figure I can do a couple more decades without it as well.
> 
> Whether any of that always-on-mic-connected-live-to-the-Internet should be active or not while the screen is "locked" is something I can't say with confidence.  Even if designed to be a certain way, like webcams there's no guarantee it can't be abused.
> 
> Zuckerberg keeps tape over his laptop camera.
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> ____________________________________________________________________
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