My Wife Keeps Unplugging Alexa for a ‘Good Reason’
There's another female in the house named 'Alexa' and my wife hasn't earned her trust yet, so she keeps putting her in a coma and leaving me to turn her on when I feel the need.
I don't think it's a jealousy thing, cause I've told my wife that she will ALWAYS come first and Alexa is for both of us to enjoy. There's a lot that Alexa does for me, and I'll admit that my wife has caught me enjoying her when she wasn't home. I never feel bad about this, and feel this is why she's there.
My wife has been studying cyber-security for a while now, and has come to this conclusion with Alexa (otherwise known as "Amazon Echo") -- she listens to EVERYTHING you say around her even when you don't say "Alexa"!
We started to realize, first hand, that she ingests everything you say in your own private conversations around her. How? We were talking about a specific vacation destination over dinner the other night, and suddenly we started to see online advertisements for vacation destinations on websites we visited. Neither of us had recently looked up anything online regarding a vacation, and just spoke about it one time over dinner.
As a matter of fact, the same thing is happening to all of us with our cell phones! You can talk to Siri or Google by just saying their name, which means they're always listening to you.
Serving up interest-based advertising based on listening is common practice these days, and most of us don't even realize how scary it is, with privacy being a huge concern. It's no longer a worry that you have to be careful of what you say on your phone anymore, it's now about what you say anywhere near your smartphone or home smart-speaker device.
I'll give my wife credit, she was right with her desire to set some boundaries with Alexa. I now understand why my wife sometimes has choice words for her when were all having a conversation together. It totally makes sense now!