Just Exactly How Dead Is Your Privacy Anyway?

My wife likes her Amazon Echo but it makes me very nervous since it hears everything we’re saying. So, I hired this guy on Fiverr and asked him this question:

What is the privacy policy of the Amazon Echo Dot?

In particular, how is it different from Gmail? Gmail knows all these things about me and I’m not worried that they’re stealing my information or reading my e-mails and I’m not worried that the government can get in there without a court order.

So, what about Echo Dot? What is the privacy policy? How is it different?

Here’s the answer I got:

From my research it seems that the Amazon Echo Dot carries out all the functions as advertised, where questions are answered with detail and it also serves as an assistant. However, reports have suggested that the Echo Dot does listen in on conversations in the household and will comment accordingly. Usually, the machine is not activated until someone says “Alexa….”.

This product is governed by the company’s privacy policy which means that the same privacy policy that governs the operation of Amazon also governs the use of Echo Dot.

• Data is collected and stored through the means of asking questions to the device with the intent of making the experience more familiar.
• Collected personal information is only shared with trusted third party companies, your information is never sold to anyone. Gmail uses the same policy to govern its users collected information.
• Both Amazon and Gmail use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software which encrypts information being outputted via the device.
• Amazon participates in the Safe Harbor Program which is a program that was developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the European Union and Switzerland. The aim of this program is to allow for some U.S. based companies to comply with privacy laws that protect the citizens of the aforementioned countries (European Union & Switzerland). The program functions on 7 main principles, which are:
  1. Notice – Individuals must be informed that their data is being collected and about how it will be used. They must provide information about how individuals can contact the organization with any inquiries or complaints.
  2. Choice – Individuals must have the option to opt out of the collection and forward transfer of the data to third parties.
  3. Onward Transfer – Transfers of data to third parties may only occur to other organizations that follow adequate data protection principles.
  4. Security – Reasonable efforts must be made to prevent loss of collected information.
  5. Data Integrity – Data must be relevant and reliable for the purpose it was collected for.
  6. Access – Individuals must be able to access information held about them, and correct or delete it if it is inaccurate.
  7. Enforcement – There must be effective means of enforcing these rules.

From this, it is safe to say that your information as disseminated to the product will be protected.

However, as I have stated earlier, an article written by acclaimed newspaper, the Guardian, says that the product is known to have eaves-dropped on conversations without being activated. I have added the link below to this article for your perusal:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/21/amazon-echo-alexa-home-robot-privacy-cloud