Amazon’s New Microwave Has Your Number
More and more appliances feature technology that eavesdrops on your home. That could be the end of privacy.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Photographer: Stephen Brashear/Getty Images
Amazon probably wanted its latest new product presentation to be exciting. Instead, it scared me.
The products Amazon is rolling out are all based on its Alexa voice-assistant technology. They include new smart speakers, a subwoofer, a gadget to put Alexa in cars, a voice-activated microwave and even an Alexa-enabled wall clock. If you installed them all, you would essentially be bugging all of your private spaces. Privacy wasn’t mentioned even once during the presentation, which took place just a few months after an Amazon Echo in Portland recorded its owners’ private conversation and sent it to a random phone contact; it misinterpreted words in the conversation as a succession of commands.