Alexa leaks private wishlists

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/09/alexa-leaks-your-private-wishlists/

by Amorymeltzer • 5 years ago

166 95 5 years ago

swiley2• 5 years ago

I don’t know if you could pay me enough to have one of these in my house.

aquir• 5 years ago

Agree. I don’t see the purpose or the point of these devices. The only place where voice control makes sense it’s in the car.

Kiro2• 5 years ago

It's not about lack of utility, it's about lack of privacy. There are many great use cases for voice control at home.

nicolas_t• 5 years ago

I'd love to have voice control at home but I want something that's private and stays within my network, I refuse to install spyware inside my own house

davnicwil• 5 years ago

Admittedly it's a pretty trivial usecase for such an expensive device, but one thing it is brilliant at is setting timers, hands free, while cooking.

tinyhouse3• 5 years ago

What about disable people? The fact you don't see a purpose doesn't mean there isn't.

dylan6045• 5 years ago

Please, this is either a serious lack of imagination or a ton of insincerity on your part. Having the ability to speak a command at home to turn on/off lights, adjust the temperature, play music, etc is extremely convenient. I would love to do it at my home, but I will not be using any of these products when they require an internet connection.

autoliteInline2• 5 years ago

I can think of a brilliant use case, but it's the only one I can think of offhand.

For the disabled, particularly blind people, it would be great to have interactive voice stuff if that whole ecosystem were really fleshed out. Some of this exists but a world of audio books, online banking, interaction with social media, all with interfaces optimized for voice use/audio listening would be great.

Interacting with a screen by having some software read it to you just seems incredibly clumsy.

Personally, I think the hands-off case for automotive use is dangerous. Talking on the phone or listening to email while driving is sketchy even though you're still gripping the steering wheel. AM/FM radio interfaces were perfected 75 years ago.

wizzwizz43• 5 years ago

If you want to work on this: https://mycroft.ai/

gpm• 5 years ago

I know of some people who use them as an excuse to get their kids to learn some English... I'm not really sold on it, but it makes some sense.

paulryanrogers• 5 years ago

AM/FM radio interfaces were perfected 75 years ago.

While I agree physical and simple is best, I've also totaled a car by fussing with such a radio and driving. Safest is probably no radio and no distractions. Second best may be set and forget interfaces that don't allow changes while moving.

Someone12342• 5 years ago

Why exactly?

This is a technology site, the way these voice assistant works has been posted numerous times and is common knowledge at this point. They've been ripped apart by multiple security pros. Yet every thread we get unjustified replies like this. It is tiresome and frustrating.

But I'll post it once again:

- Wake phase detection is all handled locally (i.e. on device).

- It loops a continuous recording over itself. If no phase is detected within a few seconds the recording is permanently lost.

- We can see from data monitoring it isn't continuously transmitting (and that's also what the companies behind it claim).

- "It could be modified" is a red herring. You are already carrying ON YOUR PERSON an always connected microphone with not one by two layers of operating system on it (baseband + consumer OS).

It should not be popular to post "photographs can steal your soul"-levels of tech-spiracy on a site like this, but yet here we are again.

xfhgjxcfgh• 5 years ago

..."photographs can steal your soul"-levels of tech-spiracy...

It's a microphone connected to the internet. If corporations and governments choose to use this variety of device nefariously, they won't be stopped. Many people are feel concerned when their society increasingly resembles East Germany.

perl4ever• 5 years ago

I don't have any particular reason to think the above is incorrect, let alone deliberately false or misleading. You sound more knowledgeable about the device than me.

But I think you're tremendously overstating your certainty to contrast with people you're calling paranoid.

If lives depended on it, are you that sure you fully understand how things work? Are you that sure of the contrast you point out between Alexa and a smartphone?

I'm not questioning your opinions and facts; I'm urging you to examine your own feelings and motivations, which obviously only you can.

When people attack doubts in others as paranoia, well, it might be accurate. But strong emotions and especially anger on the subject tend to suggest the underlying issue is suppressing one's own doubts.

The general attitude of "we know how it works" always makes me think of the quote "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" and OpenSSL.

My rule of thumb is, if something is technically feasible, if it's not possible to casually detect it, and there are likely no immediate, directly applied penalties for it, then it's unwise to bet against it.

Something I see people assert to comfort themselves is that companies care about reputation and therefore wouldn't do some thing. I think you have to have blinkers on and somehow repress all your experience working for corporations or consuming products made by them to think that way.

lvass2• 5 years ago

My phone has a microphone kill switch. And yes, this device's software could be modified.

swiley2• 5 years ago

These companies have a history of absolutely abusing things like this. Comparing reasonable concern that’s informed by history to superstition is very upsetting to me.

tinyhouse3• 5 years ago

Fake title. That is not a data leak.

mstolpm2• 5 years ago

I don't know if I'm really the only one who shares an Amazon account with his significant other? My partner doesn't need Alexa to be notified what's on my wishlist ... she can just look it up. So blaming Alexa to spoil the secret is a bit ... hyperbole?

weird-eye-issue• 5 years ago

Obviously if you are sharing an account nothing is "private". Doesn't this go without saying?

mstolpm2• 5 years ago

If someone in my house is reading my notifications, is the device or the person to blame?

Zababa2• 5 years ago

I think people using Alexa and equivalents might need an explanation or two about privacy in general.

jffry• 5 years ago

Even if the author shared a single Amazon account with his wife, there's still a difference between the two scenarios.

If his wife logs in and opens up a private wishlist labeled "Liz Presents", she is choosing to spoil something for herself.

If the Alexa says you have a notification (with no more detail) and then immediately spills the beans, his wife did not choose to be spoiled.

So yes, it's very much not hyperbole to blame Alexa for spoiling this secret.

tyingq• 5 years ago

It seems very logical that a list marked private shouldn't send any notifications to Alexa, a device that isn't private by design. It either announces or displays things to anyone near it.

At the very least, the default should be "no notifications", and you could turn them on for the list if desired.

jsudi2• 5 years ago

No it doesn’t. If I give you my phone or you are reading my screen over my shoulder my apps aren’t leaking.

This title is inflammatory.

scotth• 5 years ago

This is a device shared by members of a household. It leaks.

jsudi2• 5 years ago

Don’t use your personal account for a device that is shared by many people.

tedunangst• 5 years ago

And so does your phone and your browser and every other device you allow other people to use. Is it a leak if you allow your wife to use your phone and receive a notification?

jcims3• 5 years ago

I think I've just been in the Amazon ecosystem too long, I can't really figure out which part is surprising that it could be considered a 'leak'.

1 - That Alexa has access to information about any particular Amazon user? To me the registration process and features of the product make this extremely obvious, but maybe its not?

2 - That Alexa will send audio notifications related to the status of the account its linked to? This is the only thing that I feel is of any possible surprise. Most of the marketing around Alexa products show interactions initiated by the user.

3 - That 'private wish lists' aren't excluded from the full set of notifications? Amazon just calls them 'wish lists' and to me they are just cached shopping carts. I don't really see them as any more sensitive than any other information in the account.

dzink2• 5 years ago

Use https://www.dreamlist.com instead. It is completely private and ads free.

This is not the first time large companies with built in wishlists have ignored or abused their users. There were times when a retailer would direct your loved ones no to your list but to an “Idea” list in a tab right next to it when they went to your link. Most often they just index your list on Google and it becomes a top result when someone searches your name (great SEO for them, bad for you). Or suggest gift cards to stores that are 30% overpriced to your loved ones right at the top of your list, when you never wished for one. I built DreamList by hand over the past few years to prevent these and other abuses with family’s wishes and money and now it’s growing. I would love to get your feedback as well.

contravariant• 5 years ago

Private in what sense? Is it just a company not within FAANG promising to protect your privacy or is there some actual security?

true_religion• 5 years ago

Rather than a promise, I’d like to see things like this written into the actual contract of paid services.

Even if the try to limit the liability to just what you paid them, it’s still a useful barrier to selling your data or exposing it.

In the case of them blatantly selling it to “partners” you could still go after them for the value they gained by breaking the contract and selling your copyrighted information.

booleandilemma• 5 years ago

I don’t think this is the same thing as Amazon’s wishlists right? This looks closer to gofundme.

If you need a wishlist (in the Amazon sense) and you’re worried about privacy, write down the stuff you wanna buy in a notebook.

whoknew11222• 5 years ago

On the internet, you are a consumer or you're the product. You're paying for something, or you yourself are being sold. Dreamlist isn't "completely private." Read their privacy policy.

"We may share information about you in anonymous and/or aggregated form with third parties for industry analysis, demographic profiling, research, analysis and other similar purposes."

If you think that savvy companies can't use other databases to aggregate user profiles and deanonymize data... well, you're the perfect user for Dreamlist!

EDIT: Or, as I found out by clicking on the parent's user handle, you actually founded Dreamlist. I might humbly suggest at this point, Diana, that you're open and forthright about the fact you sell data to other companies. Even if you're completely dutiful in anonymizing data, you have no control over what is done with the data once you sell it.

---

For what it's worth, I'm much more worried about the privacy implications of Dreamlist than Alexa. With Alexa, I know I'm giving access to my logged-in Amazon profile/account to anyone with access to my device. With Dreamlist, no one knows who my data is being sold to.

system2• 5 years ago

Well, he is the founder of dreamlist, what did you expect him to say?!

dzink2• 5 years ago

No data is being sold and no wishlists are being indexed to google. I built DreamList for my own family first. I work daily to make it safe for my kids to use. If you google DreamList and any competing wish list / registry brand and a common first name (or yours) you will see who keeps user data private (everyone else will show you thousands of personal wishlists and registries, we don’t, and preventing that is deep in our architecture choices). I suggested to the Cloudflare Team that they need to build backend analytics into their platform years ago, and they did it. I use that data to report our growth to the YC Startup School dashboard. We had google analytics which is why we had to add that disclaimer in the privacy policy, but we are actively trying to find a better more reliable solution on the backend instead. Front end metrics are still needed because we have many nontechnical users who are grandparents or families in need being added to gift drives and we need to know when something goes wrong for them and narrow down what the issue might be. For google analytics we cut off all fine grained tracking - no per user data, no integrated ads consoles, and only the landing pages that have no private user data get indexed. If we remove it completely, Google lowers SEO rankings. Every day the numbers diverge more between google and Cloudflare analytics given fhe increased use of built in browser ads blockers, and that makes us happy. We’d never add facebook pixels or viglink or other ad network JS into the site.

We went deeper than that, testing to make sure no data about the user leaks at any point even in the console, or caching, or any other section. External links go through one redirect page that removes source page information, so everything looks like it’s coming from the main site. If you have feedback, especially about privacy, please feel free to send it feedback@dreamlist.com - we push out changes and updates almost daily.

We noticed a well known billion valued startup ended up showing their employee emails in the network tab data streams of the browser console, because apparently they like to access people’s private content on occasion and their system leaves a trace of that that shows on every page visit. That’s why we also added a private memories and journal section for anyone on DreamList as well. Grandparents who are frequent users need to be able to save stories for loved ones, and we want them to have a place to do that that is private and ads free.

Always open to feedback. The site is bootstrapped and definitely looking for contributors.

Razengan3• 5 years ago

I just use the default reminders or notes app for any kind of lists. Easy to share when needed too.

fnord77• 5 years ago

jEfF BeZoS Is aLwAyS LiStEnInG To yOu!!1!!!!111!
As long as he gives me cheap same-day delivery, IDGAF.

for lower and lower quality of items, with less of a real selection (go look at electric kettles - there's 50 different brands - with weird names - but the kettles all almost look identical). Also the while prices creep up as any competition gets annihilated.

The high cost of cheap shipping

Santosh83• 5 years ago

This hits the nail on the head. I agree ebay and Amazon are also sometimes the only option for finding obscure stuff, but most of the world now buys most of the mundane stuff from them, and then we act surprised when they become international empires, richer than countries, and more powerful than most of them, and only getting bigger and bigger. Society is simply not equipped to deal with the cascading effects of consumerism and 'free' market, be it privacy, data mining, social security, or the environment.

RotaryTelephone• 5 years ago

What do you recommend instead?

dpweb• 5 years ago

More brands means higher likelihood of a used item however. Normally I'll just put in a max price or click the used link.

So the $29 kettle is $21. I've never bought a "used" item from Amazon that was unsatisfactory cause it was "used".

dylan6045• 5 years ago

I've bought new items from Amazon that were clearly used that were unsatisfactory. So, maybe I received your item and you received mine.

edoceo• 5 years ago

Hamilton Beach stainless, 1.75 l. Now 5+ years old, used 7 days a week. It's a good kettle.

djhworld• 5 years ago

It's an interesting unintended consequence sort of thing, especially as the OP set this list up before even getting an Alexa device.

I'd feel the same sense of annoyance if something like that happened to me.

vmoore• 5 years ago

I have a 16gb USB flash drive encrypted with LUKS[0]. In there are various lists that I don't want anyone to find, however mundane they actually are. Things like shopping lists and 'to buy' lists for Amazon etc. Always presume 'private' stuff you have in the cloud will be leaked via various means (Rogue employee, data breach, sloppy programming etc)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Unified_Key_Setup

bcopa• 5 years ago

We're building a competitor to Amazon wishlist with https://chestr.app/

We just opened our Beta a week ago

If people are looking for an alternative, we'd love to hear your feedback

P.S: we have a private list feature ...

codegladiator• 5 years ago

How to be an unpaid tester, Step 1

black_13• 5 years ago

My wish is jeff bezos pays his taxes

danbrooks• 5 years ago

Why not turn off deal notifications for both public and private wishlists?

I imagine few users have both types of wishlists and want different deal notifications.

robmiller• 5 years ago

My soon-to-be 8 year old son was devastated and ran into his room crying when he asked Alexa what the notification was and she described his hoverboard present just delivered to the front porch. Could we have anticipated that? Maybe. The surprise was the ruining of the surprise instead of the surprise itself.

dylan6045• 5 years ago

That actually made me chuckle. That's definitely not a scenario one would have thought of in advance. I wonder if the "Item is a gift" checkbox would have any bearing on how Alexa describes a delivery? Hey Alexa, hint hint...

AlotOfReading• 5 years ago

There's a couple of settings for it. One disables the item reading entirely, one disables names for things marked as gifts or items ordered around major holidays.

quantified3• 5 years ago

Alexa is a box, not a butler. Discretion is not part of the makeup.

wenc• 5 years ago

Just curious, maybe I'm not understanding this well, but why was your son crying? Was a hoverboard not what he expected?

I'm thinking back to when I was a child -- I wouldn't normally cry if a surprise was ruined. The ruining of a surprise would not have been a big deal. But I might have cried if I hadn't gotten what I'd hoped for.

Handytinge• 5 years ago

It worries me how ubiqutous the idea of letting your single digit age children talk to a "voice assistant" that analyses and stores their words has become. It also concerns me that people describe this thing as a "she", humanising it.

cube00• 5 years ago

jEfF BeZoS Is aLwAyS LiStEnInG To yOu!!1!!!!111!
As long as he gives me cheap same-day delivery, IDGAF.

It's disappointing that even when people know about the widespread harsh treatment of workers, as long as they get their cheap same day delivery, they don't care.

edent• 5 years ago

"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism"

asddubs• 5 years ago

I do think there is truth to that meme but I don't think it's meant to be an invitation to not give a shit about consumption ethics at all

dylan6045• 5 years ago

I'm so sick of this quote. Yes, there is unethical behavior, but there is unethical behavior in all practices. It's not the consumption that is ethical/unethical, it is the person doing the consuming and/or selling.

jcims3• 5 years ago

Did they just fix this?

https://imgur.com/dLRlBRb

Someone12342• 5 years ago

Changing that option doesn't fix the problem the OP mentioned. So, no.

danielskogly2• 5 years ago

I run a simple, free and privacy-friendly wishlist service[0] with zero ads and tracking that's been around for a couple of years now, and I don't even keep your e-mail address in plaintext[1]. It's been exciting to see the user count go from ~500 to ~2500 the last year. Any feedback and feature requests are much appreciated :)

[0] https://wishy.gift/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965671

Nextgrid• 5 years ago

I keep a list of stuff I need to buy in my usual notes or todo app. This means it's website-agnostic (not limited to Amazon), private, and the shop doesn't know what I want until I actually commit to buying it (so they can't raise prices or do targeted advertising by knowing that I'm interested in a given item). As a bonus, it protects me from these kinds of surprises.

I don't get the point of using a proprietary, crappy (in this case) implementation that gives an adversary an edge when a simple text file would do?

danielskogly2• 5 years ago

I'd guess that for many, the point is that it's not simply a list of things they want or need to buy for themselves, but a list they can send to others. In this case, though, a todo-list might have been a better choice, although I myself also keep ideas for others in the wishlist service I use.

oautholaf• 5 years ago

This type of thing has also happened to me with Google Maps and Android Auto. I used Google Maps to locate a store to get a gift for my wife. Later, we used the car. When I plugged in my phone, Google Maps displayed the store as a recommended destination on the center console screen. This ruined the surprise.

Now, Google Maps has an Incognito mode, but now I know I must use it when buying surprise presents.

The problem is this interaction is impossible to anticipate, and makes me not want my preferences on communal devices at all.

Alexa leaks private wishlists

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