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Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by kerng on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @12:55PM (#17357094)
What could possibly ever go wrong putting a third party corporate spying machine in each room? It's unbelievable how much blind and naive trust there is.
Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by Azeolus on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:31PM (#17357531)
> It's unbelievable how much blind and naive trust there is

Do you sweep every hotel room you use for listening devices?

Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by michaelmior on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:42PM (#17357671)
I assume the answer is no, but sweeping for listening devices is different than ignoring a listening device which is clearly sitting right in front of you.

Personally, I have no problem with it, but I can see why others would be concerned.

Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by maxk42 on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @02:04PM (#17357922)
No, because there's one in my pocket.
Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by voidwtf on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:29PM (#17357513)
Yea, I can’t believe all these people walking around with these spying machines in their pockets. Subjecting the rest of us to their second hand spying. Oh wait, were we talking about Alexa or cellphones/smartphones?
Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by e1ven on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:34PM (#17357582)
Personally, I disable "Hey, Siri" and other watchword interfaces.

That said, I think that if someone complains about X, and you reply "But what about Y?!" you're not really addressing their concern.

Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by piptastic on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:41PM (#17357653)
If a person complains about X while actively doing/using Y, then they are not really addressing their concern either.
Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by dual_basis on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @08:09PM (#17361037)
I don't understand this. Presumably you disable "Hey Siri" because you are concerned it is doing more than Apple claims, but if that's the case then why do you trust that disabling it actually disables the parts they don't tell you about?
Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by X6S1x6Okd1st on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:38PM (#17357624)
Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by hueving on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @01:38PM (#17357629)
People with smart phones don't follow me into my hotel room.
Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by chriswarbo on Wednesday June 20, 2018 @02:07PM (#17357963)
> Yea, I can’t believe all these people walking around with these spying machines in their pockets

Me either. Your comment sounds sarcastic, but there are people (me included) that find this concerning (not unbelievable though; the incentives are clear).

What I find most frustrating is that we've reached the point where even privacy advocates, speaking to privacy advocates at privacy advocacy events (e.g. Open Rights Group) just assume that everyone's carrying a phone, posting to social media, etc. :(

Re:Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels by voidwtf on Thursday June 21, 2018 @12:58AM (#17362273)
It was sarcastic, I’ll apologize for that. It’s mostly a frustrated response to all the “they’re listening” comments on every tech thread ever lately. The truth is I think they’re right. The problem I see is most of these same people are using Facebook, Amazon, Google search, Gmail, Windows, Smartphones, Verizon, or one of the many products or services that brazenly and openly hoover up every bit of information for the purpose of selling it or marketing back to them.

The expectation to privacy is nearly dead and we’re concerned about all the wrong things. You could make the conscious decision to try and be off-grid, but even that won’t keep you anonymous. Next family BBQ you go to, your family member snaps a picture uploads it to Facebook and tags you in it. Then suddenly it’s reccomending them to be friends with your coworkers because you were tagged in a work photo uploaded to a coworkers Facebook page.

Companies are actively collecting astronomical amounts of data, some data they don’t even know how they’re going to use yet. But you don’t get a decision about any of it. At this point I think some of these companies know more about us than we know about ourselves.

Government agencies are going to non-governmental agencies to get information they couldn’t legally collect themselves.

So yes, I was being sarcastic. I just wish we’d focus on how to take back control of our data and worry less about how they’re collecting it. I’m sure the majority of us are freely giving it away through our choice of services and products. Why would they risk getting caught spying?