[HN Gopher] Statistical Analysis shows Echos process voice to se...
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Statistical Analysis shows Echos process voice to serve ads
Author : BeniBoy
Score : 298 points
Date : 2022-04-27 07:56 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| manesioz wrote:
| Honestly I can't see why anyone has these smart speakers anyways.
| Best case scenario is what, saving a minute by not typing in a
| Google query or phone number?
|
| Doesn't seem like a sufficient benefit when you consider the
| downside -- a device listening to your conversations and selling
| that data to ad agencies.
| garciasn wrote:
| Ad agencies hearing that I want to know the weather, dad jokes,
| recipes, turn on and off my lights, and to listen to smooth
| jazz is literally the least of my problems when it comes to
| data being shared/sold.
|
| Just like anything, there's a trade off and, for the case of
| convenience, I'm willing to make the trade off between
| convenience of talking to a device to do tasks for me and
| having an ad agency learn what music I listen to that Amazon is
| probably selling to them anyway since I use the Amazon Music
| service.
|
| I get your skepticism and applaud it, but you have to remember
| 99% of the population doesn't know, care at all, or is willing
| to make the trade off, whereas the 1% are some of those folks
| amassed here on HN.
|
| YMMV.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I upvoted specifically, because this is effectively how a lot
| of users see this feature ( admittedly based on anecdata ). I
| might even expand on it. Most users do not even see a trade-
| off. Most see pure benefit.
|
| But.. there is hope as jokes along the lines 'Wiretap, what
| is the time?' seem to have become more common.
| garciasn wrote:
| I know Amazon isn't doing a whole helluva lot with the data
| they're collecting on me via their UI nor their devices; if
| they were, I would have a lot better recommendations than
| they offer to me on the regular. Yes, recommendation
| engines are hard, but Amazon has the computational power,
| resourcing, and data to do it well, yet they're simply not.
|
| So. For now, I'm fairly convinced the data collected are
| useless/meaningless and I'm happy to go about my day w/o
| much worry. If I suddenly start seeing much better targeted
| recommendations, I'll rethink my strategy.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I.. have a problem with this line of reasoning. If the
| data is there, it will be used; maybe it will not be used
| now, but it will used and you have little control over
| how and when..
|
| And heavens know how much better we will get at it. I am
| retard at analytics and the things I saw are already
| absolutely amazing. Just because ads can't seem to show
| you relevant information is not a good indication Amazon
| can't infer you like midget porn.
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| Main one for us is home automation - being able to turn on/off
| lights, heating, hot water etc is very convenient, saves time
| [1], money and improves home security.
|
| Can't speak for G's offering, but currently Rest of Ear of
| Sauron Alexa and chipper, but particularly thick, Siri either
| don't work very well or fall into the easy to live without
| novelty category for us.
|
| [1] Particularly around Xmas, lots of switchs which are almost
| always buried somewhere behind the tree ...
| mbg721 wrote:
| They were sold hard as a means of keeping up with the Joneses;
| I think some people bought them just because they thought they
| were supposed to.
| philjohn wrote:
| Carplay/Siri is a big one - I can send a text, play music,
| listen to a podcast without taking my eyes off the road.
| Gertio wrote:
| As a software engineer I found it very very interesting how
| voice input feels.
|
| It is different because it's always available without looking
| for your phone on one site and on the other it actually removes
| the need to have your phone with you all the time.
|
| It also feels much more natural.
|
| Independent of the benefits, I have a smartphone with a
| microphone, webcam, Laptops etc. The sentiment that a hardware
| verified device starts to listen in after specific keywords is
| for me less of an issue than all the other devices I just
| mentioned.
|
| I really think that natural voice input will be the future. I
| want a personal assistant in my flat. And if Elon musk now
| starts the robot war, those robots will be controlled by voice.
| I'm pretty sure about it. I also saw plenty of ml research
| which indicates that.
|
| Edit: and yes voice is so much more practical when you cook or
| in the shower.
| simpsond wrote:
| It's unfortunate we have to consider the downside. That said,
| using Siri for common tasks saves time. It might only be 10 to
| 30 seconds here and there, but add that up over a day, a week,
| a year... and then multiply by millions of people... The time
| savings is massive. I expect the capabilities to grow, and
| adoption to grow, because it's more convenient.
| krnlpnc wrote:
| It's baffling that so many people insist this is not happening,
| or that it's too computationally expensive.
|
| On several occasions I've seen ads appear based upon things being
| discussed, but never searched. Always with the realization I was
| near a smart device with a microphone (or an app with
| permissions)
|
| I think in hindsight this will be similar to the realization that
| systems like XKeyscore and PRISM were not only technically
| possible but already deployed.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Smart speakers and phones are NOT listening to every single
| thing around it 24/7 in order to serve you ads. That's simply
| just not how it works. There are hundreds of other data points
| on you that can be used for this like your AMEX/Visa/Mastercard
| purchase history and etc.
|
| On top of that, it would be easily detected via networking
| monitoring.
| samirahmed wrote:
| > It's baffling that so many people insist this is not
| happening, or that it's too computationally expensive.
|
| If i am not mistaken - this paper seems to look at explicit
| "Smart Speaker interactions" - not passive background listening
| which is what I believe you are alluding to.
|
| Not arguing that I am saying that latter does/doesn't happen -
| but just that this paper is not proof of it. And there is a big
| difference.
| tudorconstantin wrote:
| I think this could be implemented without listening: I am
| physically meeting with my friend X who is researching online
| for his new acquisition (or he already got it). The more
| obsessed he is with that, the bigger the chances he'll tell me
| how awesome such a thing is.
|
| So algorithms can percolate his interests to me after we meet
| and some time it would happen that we talked about it too.
| [deleted]
| metadat wrote:
| Humans are pattern recognition machines. We are so good at it
| that we even pickup on what seem like patterns but are actually
| random noise.
|
| Maybe not the best example (please chime in if you have a
| better one!), ha you ever shopped for a specific model of used
| car? Once you're on the hunt, suddenly you'll start seeing them
| everywhere when you're out and about, even though previously
| you didn't notice. There aren't more of that vehicle on the
| road than before, but now you're attuned to the pattern.
| vachina wrote:
| dullynotsonumb wrote:
| Uff
| baal80spam wrote:
| Say it ain't so!
| midislack wrote:
| OOOOooooooohhh this one's really drawing a lot of damage control.
| Simple anecdotal evidence was enough to convince me and many
| other people years ago that Google and Amazon, at the very least,
| were spying in every way possible. Why wouldn't they? Users have
| technically agreed to all data collection anyway. It simply
| doesn't make sense to not collect data, if there is an option to.
| sjg007 wrote:
| My Alexa and Facebook are spookily linked.
| camgunz wrote:
| I'm always surprised at others' surprise that voice assistants
| are data gatherers for ads (maybe except for Siri?). Isn't the
| entire business model just 2 things:
|
| - Gather data for ads
|
| - Corner the "smart assistant" market... so you can gather more
| data for ads
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I think because the companies have stated outright that they're
| not using voice data for advertising, and people assume large
| companies aren't committing fraud against them.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Most of these companies are not lacking in the amount of data
| the can collect about you.
|
| I find it hard to believe that listening in on random
| conversations, collecting the audio stream, processing it, data
| mining it, accounting for substantial noise - is worth the
| effort for any of these companies.
|
| Maybe for a smaller startup. When you're already a $1T company
| - this just doesn't seem like a good or valuable data source.
| Not to mention, it is an OBVIOUS gigantic hit to your trust.
| joshspankit wrote:
| They only need to collect it and do voice recognition: the ad
| buyers are more than happy to buy the text and do the rest of
| the data mining.
|
| "Sell my product to anyone that mentions fridge" Yanno?
| tqi wrote:
| That feels like the kind of thing that sounds good on the
| surface, but breaks down when you actually try to size it.
| The incremental value of that data vs search data seems
| nearly 0 - I would guess almost everyone who has searched
| for a fridge has said some variation of "fridge" out loud,
| and there would be so much additional noise from people who
| say it but aren't in any way intending to buy a new fridge.
|
| But don't get me wrong, it is totally plausible that some
| eng team somewhere would still build it because it's a
| shiny new tech, it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing
| that has any real world value.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I feel like you're overestimating the difficulty of
| having a word cloud AI trained for relevant phrases. Not
| just fridge, but (to continue my poor example) "fridge
| doesn't keep vegetables crisp long enough", "wish my
| fridge had a screen", "going to renovate the kitchen this
| summer", "the neighbours have a better fridge than us,
| it's red and shiny". These are all juicy indicators for
| possible high-ticket purchases in the current sales
| cycle.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > When you're already a $1T company
|
| On the other hand, maybe when you're _that_ big you 've
| already covered the low-hanging fruits (and so did your
| competitors) and now need even more?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| This is a false assumption.
|
| It's so much easier to grow Amazon .1% than to discover a
| new $100M business.
| camgunz wrote:
| Yeah I think you're right here? Maybe my loss leader
| presumption is wrong and it's some combination of:
|
| - We can build Echos/etc. cheaply and make a profit
|
| - We're working on speech recognition/AI anyway, so we have
| the data centers
|
| - We can subsidize this work by selling ad data
| abricq wrote:
| I would be SUPER interested to see this same methodology applied
| to an iPhone or an Android phone resting in a room. I've already
| had the feeling that discussions that I had, later had an impact
| on my ads, but never knew if it was random or not.
| wildmanx wrote:
| Given the power demands of such an always-on analysis engine,
| that would show in battery runtime. At least if it's happening
| while the device is not plugged in.
| abricq wrote:
| On iOS, the word "Siri" can be detected at any time (if set
| so).
|
| Maybe ( _just an hypothesis_ ) there could be a set of other
| keywords also listened for, that once detected _could_ start
| another more complex routine. Like that, you could limit the
| battery impact, and yet be able to listen to the users for
| advertising purpose.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| On my Motorola from 8 years ago, the voice command was "OK,
| Google" _or any custom short phrase you trained for it._
| But I think it would be really hard to get a useful but
| concise list of keywords... It would certainly be possible
| to listen for, say, "new Subaru" and show an ad if that
| one thing was detected, but the point is that you want to
| select which one of a million ads to show you'd need far
| more keywords, which gets computationally expensive
| quickly. It would probably be more battery efficient to
| compress audio that sounds like speech aggressively and
| then send it up to The Cloud for analysis...scary stuff,
| and part of the reason I don't have any home assistants!
| netsharc wrote:
| A lot of people anecdotally believe this "they're listening",
| but I don't, since if it happens offline, it would consume a
| lot of power of the smart devices, and if it happens on the
| cloud, then the bandwidth and computing requirements would be
| gigantic and probably have poor ROI that it's not worth it.
| But maybe I'm overestimating those requirements.
|
| Then again, I opened Instagram at a carwash once, and a few
| days later I got ads about car treatment products. I walked
| by an e-bike store the other day and stopped for about 15
| seconds to look at the bikes being displayed, and a few days
| later Instagram started showing me ads for the brand. I
| thought Instagram or another Zuck-app was tracking my
| location, but I just checked and none of the Zuck-apps on my
| phone have location permission enabled.
| dehrmann wrote:
| With all the insiders on HN, I also haven't seen anyone
| saying "yes, we listen, here's how to verify, and here's
| where it's allowed in the TOS."
| osrec wrote:
| I have mentioned this a number of times here on HN, but each
| time I'm told by other users that it just appears that way
| because the topic is fresh in my mind... I don't think that's
| the case.
| greazy wrote:
| This is called observational bias.
|
| Imo the truth is much scarier: advertises know us better than
| we known ourselves. There's also the idea that we are so
| alike, advertises can generalize to great success.
| tqi wrote:
| I think the truth is actually that we are MUCH less unique
| than we would like to believe, and that some combination of
| age + gender + location probably predicts like 80% of our
| interests.
| hammock wrote:
| Curious if any reader here has a data point on that - the
| # of data points required to predict some larger fraction
| of your profile.
| Kye wrote:
| This is especially blatant when you don't fit into any
| category advertisers understand. Most of them think I'm
| either a hip urban youth _or_ a well-off exurban housewife.
| I don 't think they know what to do with someone who has
| associations, friendships, and interests that cross
| countless geographic and socioeconomic boundaries.
| [deleted]
| technothrasher wrote:
| > This is called observational bias.
|
| I think you mean confirmation bias. Observer bias is
| similar, but relates to being non-blinded during a
| scientific study.
| a3w wrote:
| Confirmation bias means that you want to look for
| examples of proofing something, instead of seeking
| counterexamples. That's not it, either.
|
| Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or Frequency illusion could be
| what we were seeking?
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The logic is that you talk about dozens of things around your
| phone per day yet you never see an ad targeted at you, you
| only notice it on the rare occasion it does happen. So either
| Apple is deciding to only target you with ads very rarely or
| it's a rare coincidence.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Please, read the paper or at least the abstract before
| commenting. The paper is not about "at-rest" devices; it's
| about inferences made from the audio stream of activated
| commands. Ie, it's about the depth of processing done on "hey
| Alexa" commands, not the breadth of data that's being processed
| by the device.
| malf wrote:
| Paper seems to actually show things like "If you install the
| Fitness skill, Amazon shows you fitness ads", but that's less
| sexy, I guess.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I think what it's actually showing (per Section 6.1) is that
| Amazon is using wishy-washy language to give the impression
| that they are not using voice recordings to build ad profiles
| on users[1]. They instead claim that it's for "personalized
| experiences" and "building inclusiveness".
|
| This adorable little infographic on "the journey of a voice
| request" conveniently leaves out that it gets used for
| advertisement[2]. They have also made public statements that
| outright state that voice data doesn't get used for ad-
| targeting[3]
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Alexa-Privacy-
| Hub/b?ie=UTF8&node=1914...
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/b/?node=23608618011
|
| [3] _In a statement, Amazon said the company took "privacy
| seriously" and did "not use customers' voice recordings for
| targeted advertising."_
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/business/media/amazon-goo...
| zie wrote:
| > They have also made public statements that outright state
| that voice data doesn't get used for ad-targeting[3]
|
| "not use customers' voice recordings for targeted
| advertising."
|
| I guess it depends on how one reads that quote. A trusting
| sort could read that to mean, we don't use anything we learn
| from voice recordings for targeted advertising.
|
| A skeptic might read that quote and determine:
|
| Well we generate metadata from the recording, and we then use
| the metedata for targeted advertising, but we don't use the
| actual recording for advertising.
|
| Which makes sense, if I was to implement something like this,
| I wouldn't use the actual recording, I'd process the
| recording(which I have to do anyway to answer the request)
| and if I happen to save some useful for advertising data
| along the way, well, more $$'s for me!
|
| Which one is true? I guess it mostly depends on how hungry
| Amazon is to make a buck and what they think they can get
| away with. As a privacy snob, I'd prefer the trusting version
| to be true.
| tensor wrote:
| Yes exactly, the text is arguably data _derived_ from voice
| recordings. So they can say that they don 't use the voice
| recordings for ads, while omitting that they do use the
| derived text that was recognized for ads. It's unclear
| language but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the
| correct interpretation.
| midislack wrote:
| NSA uses the same tricky language. Clapper got before the
| American people and said "nobody is reading your emails."
| What he didn't say is, computers are processing them
| because there's too many for people to read. In this case,
| I suspect Amazon is technically telling the truth, and
| automatic transcription into text is what drives their ad
| engine.
| mort96 wrote:
| 99% of people who read your comment (including me) won't have
| read the paper. You should cite the parts of the paper which
| made you come to the conclusion that they really only showed
| that ads are shown based on what you install, not based on what
| you say otherwise.
| almost wrote:
| Reading the introduction section should be enough. It's
| pretty clear that they're talking about Amazon targeting ads
| based on your interactions with the Alexa and not, as the
| title here implies, based on just listening in to other
| things you say.
|
| The paper does talk about "voice data" which I think is a bit
| misleading. "Voice data" to me would imply an analysis of the
| sounds your voice makes directly for ad targeting purposes
| but it's clear enough from the context what they actually
| mean.
|
| Amazon does plenty of rubish things already, no need for us
| to make up extra things!
| mort96 wrote:
| From the introduction, it seems like their main concern is
| that "smart speakers record audio from their environment
| and potentially share this data with other parties over the
| Internet--even when they should not". They provide two
| examples of how that happens:
|
| 1. "Smart speaker vendors or third-parties may infer users'
| sensitive physical (e.g., age, health) and psychological
| (e.g., mood, confidence) traits from their voice."
|
| 2. "The set of questions and commands issued to a smart
| speaker can reveal sensitive information about users'
| states of mind, interests, and concerns."
|
| They also mention that "smart speaker platforms host
| malicious third-party apps", and "record users' private
| conversations without their knowledge", but that's
| mentioned as examples of prior research and thus seems to
| serve more as background than something this paper is
| trying to prove.
|
| Point 2 is the one you're focusing on, and yeah, that's not
| surprising. You'd expect Amazon to build a profile on you
| based on the stuff you ask Echo to do (though the ethics of
| this certainly warrants discussion).
|
| Point 1 would be the surprising thing, that smart speakers
| infer information about people from their voice, rather
| than from the commands themselves.
|
| Their methodology seems to be to create multiple personas
| and compare the sorts of ads they get. In order to prove
| that information is inferred from traits of the voice
| rather than the words in the commands, they would need two
| personas which are identical in which commands they send
| but with different voices (female vs male voice, healthy vs
| smoker voice, something like that). From skimming section
| 3, it doesn't seem like they did that, so I'm forced to
| agree that the thing they prove in this paper (if their
| statistical methods are valid) is that Amazon builds an
| advertisement profile based on your interests as expressed
| in terms of which commands you're sending the device.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| bullet 2 is at odds with your initial statement. The data
| collected are from interactions with the smart speaker.
| Here is the opening sentence of the abstract: "Abstract--
| Smart speakers collect voice input that can be used to
| infer sensitive information about users".
| in9 wrote:
| From what is worth, I'm a data scientist who has worked on ads in
| the past. I've always been under the impression that massive
| scale audio processing for ad targetting was way too expensive
| when compared to the signal we can extract from the audio data
| and as compared to the final ad conversion. I mean, at least from
| the prices of having an instance processing streams/bacthes of
| audio data just to sort out brands/products/services that were
| mentioned in those audio streams.
|
| In my understanding, showing ads for what people that are
| connected to you searched/bought/interacted, as in a simple
| network analysis, would be much cheaper and would give you very
| similar results.
| phkahler wrote:
| It's not expensive at all when run on the edge device. Alexa
| can identify its name locally. You dont need dictation level
| accuracy to pick out advertising words, and if you miss some
| it's totally OK.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Given your framing as "massive scale audio processing" to pick
| signals out of audio streams, I think you may have misread (or
| not read...) the paper.
|
| It's not claiming Alexa is listening in while inactive. It's
| claiming that it's inferring user characteristics (age, health,
| etc) from the audio of voice commands, instead of just the
| post-transcription text.
| tensor wrote:
| This paper is studying how requests to the smart speakers are
| used. Smart speakers translate requests into text, and I'm
| assuming the ads are just keyed off the resulting requests just
| like they would be if you put them into the search system
| manually.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I'm not surprised that asking "Alexa, what is the price of a
| flight from Moscow to Kyiv" will be processed for advertisement
| and personalization purposes, but I would be surprised if "Hey,
| John. Did you hear the news about Ukraine?" did.
| gw67 wrote:
| I work at Amazon and this not happen. It's not true.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The problem isn't the lack of knowledge. The problem is lack of
| alternatives. Name a single privacy preserving smart home
| assistant that the average person can buy, install, and use.
|
| Market theory says people will vote with their wallet, which is
| why I boycott all of them. But I'm under no delusion that my
| behavior will change anything. Voting with your wallet only works
| if someone is willing to offer what you want.
| wildmanx wrote:
| > The problem is lack of alternatives. Name a single privacy
| preserving smart home assistant that the average person can
| buy, install, and use.
|
| You are implying that all alternatives have to be "buying a
| smart home assistant". There is another alternative: Don't buy
| one. If all existing alternatives are bad, then not buying any
| is also a way to "vote by wallet". Then there will be a big
| market segment of not-having-bought-yets that can get tapped
| into by just coming with a privacy-preserving offering.
| usrusr wrote:
| Unless you happen to be a blind person or something like
| that.
|
| But I share your sentiment nonetheless, I have zero desire to
| become part of the group of persons that got used to voice
| control and would therefore miss it if it wasn't available
| (as long as I don't turn blind I guess)
|
| For the blind however, I guess it's a huge win that ad-driven
| voice control gadgets exist and are available to them. I'm
| sure their options would be basically nonexistent if they
| were the entire market.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| Mycroft?
|
| [0] https://mycroft.ai
| maccard wrote:
| That falls at the first hurdle - the page you link to says
| shipping September 2022.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Mycroft have been shipping assistants since 2016:
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/making-a-mycroft/
| greggsy wrote:
| "Siri Data is associated with a random, device-generated
| identifier. This random identifier is not linked to your Apple
| ID, email address, or other data Apple may have from your use
| of other Apple services.
|
| Siri Data and your requests are not used to build a marketing
| profile, and are never sold to anyone."
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/ask-siri-dictati...
| dandare wrote:
| A single policy update can reverse all of this.
| maccard wrote:
| The same can be said for any commercial offering that you
| entrust data to. By that metric only fully self managed
| open source verified hardware is acceptable, right?
| daveoc64 wrote:
| What ads do Echo devices say or show?
|
| Aside from annoying suggestions like "By the way, you can ask me
| who the most famous person in the world is".
| entropie wrote:
| Iam not a native english speaker, but I read the topic as Echo
| process voice so Amazon can server better targeted ads.
| doubtfuluser wrote:
| I have the feeling, that the paper is flawed and missing an
| important experiment. All their results seem to rely on skills
| being used. There is indeed a need then for Amazon to prevent
| user tracking in skills (like for example Apple does and requires
| consent by the user). But to come to the conclusion that Amazon
| shares the data with advertisers I would have expected an
| experiment with eliminating skills as a reason and just having
| personas interact with Alexa core services. I guess just from
| shopping questions or general knowledge questions a lot of
| information for ad targeting could be inferred. If that's however
| not influencing ads served when no skills are used, then it's not
| necessarily Amazon directly sharing the information, but the
| skills being able to do so using Amazons provided tooling.
|
| That's a difference at least for my interpretation how "evil"
| company xyz is.
| camgunz wrote:
| They run this down as best they can (TLDR they don't think the
| skills have enough information about their personas to target
| ads to them, therefore Amazon must be doing the targeting, but
| they can't 100% rule it out):
|
| > In contrast, skills can only rely on persona's email address,
| if allowed permission, IP address, if skills con- tact non-
| Amazon web services, and Amazon's cookies, if Amazon
| collaborates with the skills, as unique identifiers to reach to
| personas. Though we allow skills to access email address, we do
| not log in to any online services (except for Amazon), thus
| skills cannot use email addresses to target personalized ads.
| Skills that contact non-Amazon web services and skills that
| collaborate with Amazon can still target ads to users. However,
| we note that only a handful (9) of skills contact few (12)
| advertising and tracking services (Table 1 and Figure 2), which
| cannot lead to mass targeting. Similarly, we note that none of
| the skills re-target ads to personas (Section 5.3), which
| implies that Amazon might not be engaging in data sharing
| partnerships with skills. Despite these observations, we still
| cannot rule out skills involvement in targeting of personalized
| ads.
| yunohn wrote:
| Additionally, they are trying to imply the common trope of
| "voice assistants are listening to everything we say all day
| for ads", whereas their test methodology was to actively use
| the top skills for those interests and perform actions.
|
| While I don't like the sharing of such data for ads, it's a far
| cry from Alexa processing voice in the background with zero
| interaction.
| fddhjjj wrote:
| What part of the paper gives you the impression they imply
| voice assistants are listening to everything? I don't get
| that.
|
| The discussion in the paper is nuanced on that point and does
| not make that claim as far as I read it. Section 2.2 (page
| 2):
|
| > The content of users' speech can reveal sensitive
| information (e.g., private conversations) and the voice
| signals can be processed to infer potentially sensitive
| information about the user (e.g., age, gender, health [82]).
| Amazon aims to limit some of these privacy issues through its
| platform design choices [4]. Specifically, to avoid snooping
| on sensitive conversations, *voice input is only recorded
| when a user utters the wake word*, e.g., Alexa. Further, only
| processed transcriptions of voice input (not the audio data)
| is shared with third party skills, instead of the raw audio
| [32]. However, despite these design choices, prior research
| has also shown that smart speakers often misactivate and
| unintentionally record con- versations [59]. In fact, there
| have been several real-world instances where smart speakers
| recorded user conversations, without users ever uttering the
| wake word [63].
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > What part of the paper gives you the impression they
| imply voice assistants are listening to everything?
|
| For me, it's this: "Your Echos are Heard"
|
| So, the opening salvo. That's what gives me the impression
| they imply voice assistances are listening to everything.
|
| I don't refer to voice commands or normal interaction as
| "echos" so the user of the word "echos" here implies
| something nefarious. Sure, it's the name of the product,
| but for me, it reads like something more.
| samhw wrote:
| jldugger wrote:
| Is there a name for when people giving advice fail to
| heed their own warning? Perhaps a humorously long german
| word.
| samhw wrote:
| Irony? ;)
| oehpr wrote:
| Wu..
|
| WOW
|
| That was a hostile response for what seemed like a
| reasonable position.
|
| Tell me samhw: If I told you I had a bunch of echos in my
| garage. Would you be wondering why I just said "I have a
| bunch of voice commands issued to my echo in my garage"?
| No. You would not.
|
| It's not an unreasonable position
|
| So tell me why it deserved that response.
| samhw wrote:
| Sorry, I don't mean to be overly harsh, but your comment
| amounts to
|
| > I personally don't use the word 'echo' in connection to
| vocal communication, which (for some incomprehensible
| reason) means that, _when someone else uses the word
| 'echo' thusly_, they are implying something nefarious.
|
| > Oh, and not just something nefarious, but
| _specifically_ that they are eavesdropping on every word
| you say (also: every breath you take, every move you
| make, &c). Somehow.
|
| > In summation: they are spying on everything you say,
| because they used the word 'echo' in their marketing
| material about a voice assistant. QED.
|
| I mean, this is barely even intelligible as a line of
| reasoning. I assumed it was dashed off quickly and
| without really thinking. If it represents your considered
| opinion, then perhaps I'm missing something very obvious,
| I don't know.
| jldugger wrote:
| > this is barely even intelligible as a line of
| reasoning.
|
| You are literally engaging in a straw-man argument.
| Nobody said any of those things verbatim, no matter how
| much you wish they had. This is bad-faith commenting and
| you should consider taking a break to de-escalate.
|
| > perhaps I'm missing something very obvious
|
| The title "Your Echos are Heard" is a pun. One meaning of
| "Echos" is the Amazon product, and the other is a
| vocalization reflected back. It's stretch, to the point
| where it's technically spelled wrong for one of the
| meanings of the word. But it's a pun re-enforced with the
| word "heard" and thats enough for people to make the
| connection.
|
| The complaint is that the article title heavily _implies_
| the study finds devices are listening to your
| conversations unprompted, without actually doing any such
| science. The clickbait title is bad enough, but when
| there's already a partisan comment brigade ready to claim
| that "science is on their side" it's definitely worse.
| yunohn wrote:
| Alexa uses the data we give to it by speaking and
| performing actions via downloaded skills - is very similar
| to all ad platforms, conveying user intent into ad
| profiles.
|
| Saying "process voice for ads" has subtle connotations in
| the current landscape of privacy discussions.
| bradleybuda wrote:
| For example, this sibling comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31178067
| fddhjjj wrote:
| As clarification, you are objecting to the phrase
| "process voice to [serve] ads" in the title which was
| provided by the submitter not the paper authors?
| yunohn wrote:
| From the abstract:
|
| > We find that Amazon processes voice data to infer user
| interests and uses it to serve targeted ads on-platform
| mannykannot wrote:
| "Subtle connotations" are not much to make an objective
| complaint out of.
| anon4272728 wrote:
| Unlike other ad platforms, Amazon claims that they do not
| use voice data for ad targeting. From paper:
|
| Amazon has publicly stated that it does not use voice
| data for targeted advertisements [83], [75].
|
| https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/are-smart-speakers-
| plant...
| i_am_jl wrote:
| I'm sure Amazon isn't processing voice data to target
| ads. Why would they need to?
|
| They're using skill interaction, order history, listening
| history, etc to target ads.
| slg wrote:
| >Alexa uses the data we give to it by speaking and
| performing actions via downloaded skills - is very
| similar to all ad platforms, conveying user intent into
| ad profiles.
|
| There is an argument that this is more privacy conscience
| than other ad platforms. One needs to say the word
| "Alexa" before Amazon will collect any potential
| targeting data. There is an active and distinct choice
| that must be made before every interaction. That isn't
| true for Google and Facebook. They will collect data in
| the background while you are doing other things. There is
| much less transparency in when and how they are
| collecting their targeting data and therefore we have
| much less agency in the process.
| zenithd wrote:
| zenithd wrote:
| nairboon wrote:
| The full title is "Your Echos are Heard: Tracking, Profiling, and
| Ad Targeting in the Amazon Smart Speaker Ecosystem"
|
| It's about the interactions with Echos, and not as some other
| comments imply, about listening to general conversations
| passively. Although, the experiment setup might be used to study
| this in a future experiment.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| Mild shock.
| yosito wrote:
| Based on anecdotal experience, giving a smartphone app access to
| your microphone "while using the app" results in targeted ads for
| things you were talking about within 10-15 minutes of having the
| app open. I haven't done any strict science to confirm it, but
| I'm obsessive about privacy and can almost always track down the
| likely reason when I get an accurately targeted ad. I'm my
| opinion, it's naive to think that our voices aren't being
| processed by tech companies to serve ads at every opportunity.
| I'm glad to see some analysis proving it, and I think we need
| more of that because the problem definitely isn't limited to
| Amazon.
| soared wrote:
| The link below is 100% not how this happens as it's owned by
| oracle, but if you'd like to read about text/nlp and how it's
| used in adtech today from a technical perspective this is an
| excellent read. This product has been the #1 product in this
| space for many years.
|
| https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/corporate/acquisitions/gr...
| titzer wrote:
| As other commenters in the thread have pointed out, this might
| not be as quite a smoking gun as it would appear.
|
| However, I still feel weird with these devices in the room. I
| have decided I am not going to trust them, I won't ever trust
| them, and I'm blaming them until they show us the code.
|
| I know I'm a doomer and a fatalist, but holy crap we are sleep-
| walking into dystopia. Your average HNer might be a little more
| attuned to the possibilities for abuse here, but the billions of
| clueless customers and hundreds of billions of dollars to be made
| will just keep tempting these behemoths further over the line and
| renormalize all of society around pervasive surveillance
| capitalism.
|
| The entire psychological context of life has changed, and I'm not
| super OK with it, TBH.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| At the risk of sounding like a broken record, monetisation and
| indiscriminate collection of user data should be illegal.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Why? If I run a store and I learn about my customer's
| interests, why shouldn't I use that to make better offers? I
| don't know why people are so freaked out by data collection. I
| just can't believe that for all the data I share, I still get
| such shitty ads.
| vincnetas wrote:
| its one thing to have guest book in your store to gather
| feedback from your users, and totally another to follow your
| customers all the way back to their homes and listen what
| they talk about. main thing is customer explicit consent. one
| where customer fully understands what he consents to.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Ok, let's take the in store analogy. Agree that following
| someone home to spy on them is wrong. But in store, if I
| see a person looking at some items on a shelf and start to
| tell them about related items, doesn't that violate the
| need for explicit consent? Expecting "full understanding"
| is too high a bar, IMO. Implicit consent, public notice and
| opt out are sufficient. Otherwise you end up with GDPR
| cookie opt ins that only train people to indiscriminately
| push "accept" buttons.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I don't think anybody claims that you need consent to do
| the equivalent of displaying "other products you may
| like". The customer entered the store willingly, and what
| you describe is quite literally the job of a shop
| assistant.
|
| The need for consent would come if the assistant were to
| record the entire conversion you have with the customer,
| and send it to Facebook or Amazon in exchange for money.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I was responding to the claim about "main thing is
| customer explicit consent. one where customer fully
| understands what he consents to." Maybe I misunderstood.
| mort96 wrote:
| > I don't know why people are so freaked out by living in a
| surveillance system where every corporation tracks their
| every move for profit
|
| You haven't read enough dystopic fiction.
| mukesh610 wrote:
| Fiction isn't exactly a good argument
| mort96 wrote:
| A lot of fiction isn't just about "look at this whacky
| world I invented". Especially dystopic fiction usually
| tries to tell us something about our own world and its
| potential future.
|
| But the main point with my comment was to re-frame what
| was advocated, from their fantasy of "one small store
| owner doing the best for their customers" into "a
| surveillance system where every corporation tracks your
| every move for profit".
| mellavora wrote:
| Right, but perhaps the McCarthy era is?
|
| Or the civil rights movement?
|
| Or the labor movements?
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| Ok, you own a store. A customer enters your store and buys a
| widget. Since you're smart and want to know everything you
| record the sale and add it to your database.
|
| Only that's not where it stops.
|
| After the customer leaves the store one of you minions
| follows him _to every other store he ever enters to record
| what he buys, or even looks at_
|
| That's why your analogy falls completely flat.
|
| Nobody would complain if it only concerns your store and your
| sales. But people violently dislike you snooping on
| _everything_ that your customer does.
|
| Worse! He doesn't even have to be a customer of yours. You
| snoop anyway, even into his most private affairs.
| mellavora wrote:
| Worse! You report this information to government
| authorities, who monitor this and may decide at a future
| time that the things you were shopping for today mark you
| as a bad or suspicious person.
|
| Worse! You also share this information with credit bureaus,
| meaning the data is available to potential employers. Thus
| limiting your job options.
|
| Looked at a hookah once because you were curious? Sorry, no
| pot-heads in my company!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I don't see the connection of this to the topic. Not
| trying to be obtuse. Are you saying it's a slippery slope
| between targeted advertisements and 1984?
|
| In my store analogy, I'm trying to make discourse on this
| topic less black and white. To recognize that data
| collection is not some inherent evil. And sure, to point
| out that a store that tries to peep in your bedroom
| window should be called to task.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > that tries to peep in your bedroom window
|
| That's not really the argument your opponent has.
|
| It's that pervasive data collection, even if it's 'only'
| outside your house, is quite bad.
|
| > I'm trying to make discourse on this topic less black
| and white.
|
| Then you need to rethink your framing, because right now
| you're trying to split it into "store tracks transactions
| by itself and uses that data itself" and "tries to peep
| in your bedroom window".
|
| Everyone else is talking about shades of gray too. But
| they're pointing out that 90% of the store-tracking
| shades have significant negative consequences.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The problem is that the government can compel ad
| targeting providers (and anyone in the
| advertising/marketing/data brokering industries) to
| reveal data about someone.
|
| Those industries have essentially built a worldwide
| spying system that would make the NSA jealous without
| them even having to pay a dime and capitalism guarantees
| those systems will keep being maintained forever.
| snapcaster wrote:
| But your store analogy is stacking the deck in favor of
| your point. As the people responding to you pointed out,
| it falls apart when you consider all the larger
| implications of pervasive data collection. Would you
| defend the Stasi with the same language? I dont know why
| you're _trying_ to make this point and gaslight the
| people who are rightfully very concerned about the
| concentration of power this data collection results in
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| This a strawman. We're not talking about your friendly
| neighbourhood corner store here. We're talking about large
| scale systems with billions of users, systems that contain
| and shape a lot of our public discourse. The way these
| platforms make money inherently affects our society and our
| democracy. "Helping your customer" is irrelevant here.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I thought this was a topic about Alexa (a voice UI) using
| your voice (actually, installed skills) to deliver more
| targeted ads. I don't see the public discourse connection
| here?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's only a matter of time before Alexa will only read
| you the "right" kind of news as to remain advertiser-
| friendly. It already happens on mainstream social media,
| where beyond actual _illegal_ content, plenty of _legal_
| content but that happens to be critical of the proverbial
| "establishment" gets demonetized, banned or even silently
| shadowbanned.
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