Disabled Alexa on portable devices, still sends conversations to Amazon.
This warning is primarily for those who have Alexa capable portable devices and are not using Alexa.
Alexa still records and sends your conversations back to Amazon,
Unless you turn off, "Help Improve App" on your Alexa tab on your Amazon account page.
It will do this even if you never used it and have it disabled on your device.
Note:
You can completely remove the app form Android phones.
You can NOT remove it from Amazon devices.
It will also do so for currently turned off home systems, if a working microphone is attached & functional. If you are actually using it there is a much longer list of privacy issues and settings.
.
I found my Fire was doing this even though I disabled everything when I first got it, I use it to read only.
.
Be safe,
~Hypatia >i<
Comments
A sign of the Times I'm afraid
Amazon, Google, Facebook and all the rest are interested in your life, your friends life and just about everything in order to either sell your data to advertisers or to target ads at you directly.
Alexa and Google Echo devices are well known got slurping your data even if you have disabled them.
And you have to pay Amazon and Google for the 'honour' of giving them your data.
These are just a few of the reasons why:-
1) I'm not on any Social Media Platform and never will be.
2) No Google Echo or Alexa device will work on my home network. The IP addresses that they use to talk to the 'Mothership' are disabled at my firewall.
Regarding point 2!
Beware if these devices have built-in wifi. If they can't talk to the mothership via your network, they might use the neighbour's instead!
Some "smart" TVs are known to do this, even if you have them wired.
Penny
IP Blocking
There are lists of them on the internet. For example
searching for "block facebook ip"
Will bring up a variety of results. Some will require detailed IT knowledge so don't try things out unless you are confident that you can roll them back when they go wrong.
I have my own IPTables Firewall system that runs on a Raspberry PI 3B (around $40). All my rules are in that.
The rules are currently over 400lines long and there is a further 600 IP addresses in the hosts file (to deny them)
I add more almost every month. I use wireshark to sniff the traffic on my home network.
I know about the trick for Smart TV's etc to piggyback on other WiFi networks. That's why my TV (a Sony) is not connected in any way and why I won't have any IOT in my home. I value my privacy. Google for me and you get nothing back and I intend to keep it that way.
Again, don't try anything that I have suggested unless you really know what you are doing.
Samantha
Wireshark
I assume you run wireshark on the firewall itself? I assume you know Wireshark on a non-firewall device can miss stuff being sent out by the OS as the OS can send ‘raw’. Win10 rules and hosts are probably in place I assume. Ideally a sniffer should be a dedicate one that is between your PC and the rest of your network or better yet, network and ISP connection.
Wireshark
I run Wireshark on an old laptop that runs CentOS and is connected to my home network via a wired interface. This is inside the firewall so I do see all the traffic on the LAN. I set the tool to detect the destination address of my firewall. The only thing on the other side of my firewall is the ISP supplied router (with WiFi disabled) and the Fibre Modem.
The sheer number of sniffing and port scanning I see on that side of the setup is mindblowing. People don't realise how must their devices are under attack 24/7.
Alexa uses "www.alexa.com" with address 54.84.153.211
Google Home/Echo is more problematic. You could start by blocking www.google.com but that would stop most people from searching the internet. Far easier to block specific Google addresses using a tool like NoScript in your browser. That plus a powerful like ad blocker such as adguard really helps. Sorry for not being specific. It is an iterative process and very much depends upon your own specific use of the internet.
If you are condifent you can turn off the DHCP server in your router and allocate IP addresses to your devices. That will stop unknown devices from connecting.
There is no one simple golden bullet that will solve all this. Sorry.
Once again if you don't know what you are doing then don't do it. Always be prepared for things to go wrong as they ususally do..
Samantha
IP Addresses
Are the 'phone home' addresses used by Echo and Alexa fixed and hard-coded (in which case I would appreciate you sharing them), or do they have to be determined? (And if so how?).
We have no I(di)oT devices and no plans acquire any either. But we do have young members of the family who have already shown their proclivities by bringing in a live grass snake. Thus we should 'be prepared' for 'snakes in the grass' like Echo and Alexa.
And we are with you on (anti-)social media as well.
Re Penny's point - I run periodic checks to see if my neighbours have open WiFi running, simply on principle, because it would suggest they are lax about electronic security in general. I had not considered her suggestion, but intend now to keep it mind.. Our own network's passwords are changed regularly, much to the annoyance of the family!