"Amazon declined to comment"
Probably the best option... Alexia was listening to them!
Amazon is apparently considering a plan to provide app developers with transcripts of people's conversations with their Alexa boxes. We're told the Bezos Bunch is mulling whether to change their developer policy to give the third-party coders who create Alexa "skills" app software the raw transcripts of what users say to Alexa …
...customer identifiable information to third party skills without the customer's consent.
Explicit consent, or does downloading their skill imply consent? I don't recall an echo reading off a list of permissions before installing skills.
Would it be all conversations? If I told Alexa to call my mom (who is stored by name in my phone book), then another skill could peak my mothers name? Seems identifiable to me.
Remember when AOL dumped all that anonymous data that totally identified an old lady? These companies are not as smart as they try to convince us they are.
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Seriously, I think Amazon have a vision of this as the ubiquitous interface to all of you IoT connected lifestyle in the 21st century. The gateway appliance that will let you set your thermostat, security system, start your car and order your SO's anniversary gift. The "browser" or "mouse" of the 21st century.
I'll let others decide if that's a vision they share.
with the GPS, wireless and location turned off."
But, but, but how will you know where you are?
How will people know where you are? Your Facebook status would go un-updated.
You'll be in an information Black hole that could last for ages. Who knows what vital tweets you might have missed? Stephen Fry might have made an astonishingly erudite remark and you would not be able to instantly comment on it.
>If your Android can only go 24 hours on standby, it needs a new battery
It may need one, but replacement may be impossible. It's a way to ensure that you are obliged to get ever-more-intrusive new models until such time as the phones start replacing themselves without your involvement.