my family is moving into a much bigger house than we used to have. we use amazon echos as an intercom system through the announcement feature. because our house is bigger, i’m being forced to get one myself for my room. i haven’t needed one for years because i use their app on my phone and i can see their announcements as a notification and i can also kill off most of its tracking by DNS. unfortunately my parents don’t understand this and are forcing me to get one. what can i do to limit its tracking?
sorry for asking a question about privacy in a privacy community. i can’t just not use it because my parents are forcing me to use it. if i was allowed to unplug it, i would.
Honestly, just muting the microphone is mostly fine. I really don’t believe they transmit shit to the cloud when they’re muted. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how they answer when they’re muted so they’re still listening, but they process the “Alexa” (or whatever wake word you use) locally and then send a short buffer of recording along with everything you say following it to the cloud to process. It’s likely they just hear that you said the wake word locally and then say “Hey I’m muted” without sending it to the cloud.
I know this answer isn’t the most privacy oriented on a privacy community, but I think this option is more reasonable than you’d think.
You mentioned blocking with DNS. You could try setting up Wireshark or something and see if there are any packets from it when you say the wake word while it is muted and how it compares to when you say the wake word when it’s unmuted.
Unfortunately the red LED would always be on because it’s muted, but you could cover it with opaque tape. Like electric tape.
Do it anyways. Everyone has a right of privacy no matter the age.
Ya there’s no such thing as “being forced to use it”. What are they going to do, lock you in your room with no food if you refuse? Just stand up for yourself and say you are not comfortable having it in your room and don’t compromise on it.
You know, in an ideal world, that makes sense.
But this isn’t an ideal world. That’s the kind of advice that can get a kid literally beaten in a bad scenario. Parents usually hold all the power in a household, and it isn’t the kind of power you can just shrug off.
Well some parents can lock you in a room with no food especially in developing countries
My neighbor tied her children because she went out and “they fight a lot” she claimed to be outside for 20 or 30 mins but neighbors said it was like half day.
That’s like 5 years in jail right there
Developing countries probably don’t have like 4 amazon echos in the house as an intercom system though, tbf.
You’d be surprised what stuff has a higher priority for purchase.
IMHO the only reason they don’t is because they don’t know how to use it or do not care…