RE: Daily Dose of Sultnpapper 08/02/18> I sure as hell didn’t see this coming…. started with fraud and ended in spying.
This is just the tip of the iceberg! Have a look at what James Corbett of the Corbett Report has to say on this! Just one example: an Amazon "convenience" device called the Alexa was not just listening in, but actually ordering toys online!
My first encounter with this kind of creepy technology was a few years ago when I was running a cafe. I started noticing that when I was having a conversation with someone, later on a text message would be populated with some of the words we'd been using and was ready to send! This started to freak me out, especially in a couple of instances when text messages were randomly sent out - messages that I had no intention of sending! One of these text messages, to my horror, went to a young girl who had come for an interview for a job in my cafe, but who hadn't been successful.
One time I was listening to the radio while driving. When I looked at my iPhone, it had a text message ready with some of the words the radio presenter had said. I was really freaked out by this! But then I started to put two and two together. I realised that it was Siri, the iPhone's voice command service, that was listening to my voice (and picking up other people's voices too) and interpreting these "voice commands" as intentions to send text messages.
I immediately disabled Siri on my phone, realising that it could also be sending my "voice commands" to who knows where... advertisers? the CIA? DARPA?
Even with Siri disabled, I'm always very careful what I say when my iPhone is around!
This all sounds real familiar and I went and watched that You Tubed you story you linked to, I had seen that before but since we don't have the Alexa or the Echo devices I really don't think about that much at all. I never have been a fan of Apple so I don't use iPhone or any of their devices either.
Corbett makes a good point about how people will pay extra for these devices and features and then be shocked when they find out the device is listening and recording them. All I can say to that is, "they have us right where they want us."Dumb downed to the point where we will pay them to spy on us.
I guess if a person really sat down and gave it some thought there is probably not one thing in existence that couldn't be used for either good or evil and how it is used is determined by who's hands it is in.
Yeah - I'd never really heard of Alexa before I saw that video. I had seen it advertised, but I didn't know what it was, and didn't think I needed it. But my brother-in-law did say a few weeks ago that he'd really like a "smart TV" - surprising, as they haven't had a TV for years. I think he was surprised by my reaction. I said "It's dumb to buy anything described as smart. Smart TVs spy on you!" I had to very quickly back this up with a few examples, and I think he kind of grudgingly agreed in the end.
Ugh I hate these cases where they trigger unintentionally. The rate of such things needs to be better controlled. I definitely turned off these things when I got my phone as well because I didn't want random actions that I didn't approve happening. Even if the chance is small, we're beside these devices all day long.
Yes, and they track us whereever we go too.