Amazon Announces 4 New Echos

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Sadly, that's laughable. A few nights ago, a nearby resident was burglarized by a pair of experienced young criminals who disabled the home's network, which included detection, entered and took what they wanted while an accomplice waited in an idling SUV. A camera across the street from the crime scene captured the activity with no apprehensions thus far.

WiFi "detection" and its related devices are not a deterrent to criminals. Short of 24-hr armed guards, CCTV and hard-wired alarm systems connected to local police are a good starting point. A professionally trained guard dog is also a plus.

I'm curious...how did they disable the network? Did they use some sort of a wifi jammer? If people are using "hard wired alarm systems", what's to stop the crooks from just...cutting the wire? Wasn't that a common thing for them to do when burglaring "back in the day"? (I could be wrong...I get most of my knowledge of this sort of thing from reading mystery books and crime fiction)

Shari

[John F]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Sadly, that's laughable. A few nights ago, a nearby resident was burglarized by a pair of experienced young criminals who disabled the home's network, which included detection, entered and took what they wanted while an accomplice waited in an idling SUV. A camera across the street from the crime scene captured the activity with no apprehensions thus far.

There will always be smarter criminals, but how common are they? I'm guessing that your story is the exception and not the rule.

The most basic thing I tend to hear is "be sure to lock your car/home". It doesn't take much to defeat a lock, and yet one does it.

... WiFi "detection" and its related devices are not a deterrent to criminals. Short of 24-hr armed guards, CCTV and hard-wired alarm systems connected to local police are a good starting point. A professionally trained guard dog is also a plus.

I wonder how many Jane/Joe's are going to be hiring 24-hour armed guards, ...

Better something then nothing, especially when it is already there / no additional purchase?

[DiapDealer]

Nothing is going to stop determined, experienced criminals (short of hiring security guards for your home) if they target you. But there's nothing wrong with trying to deter the casual, or perhaps first-time thief. People looking for a quick score to buy drugs aren't often master criminals.

[DNSB]

My personal favourite is to at least present the illusion that you are more secure than your neighbours so they are the low hanging fruit.

[tubemonkey]

Amazon must pay over $30 million over claims it invaded privacy with Ring and Alexa

Color me not surprised. These fines are a joke. They're way too low to have any punishment value.

Amazon will pay more than $30 million in fines to settle alleged privacy violations involving its voice assistant Alexa and doorbell camera Ring, according to federal filings.

In one lawsuit, the Federal Trade Commission claims the tech company violated privacy laws by keeping recordings of children's conversations with its voice assistant Alexa, and in another that its employees have monitored customers' Ring camera recordings without their consent.

more...

[haertig]

It's funny that all the articles I've recently seen on this insist on talking about the Ring camera thing. After they've put that in headlines, they have a byline far down in the article that says "The Ring violations were from before Amazon acquired the Ring company, and have since been corrected." But saying that up front doesn't really fit the agenda, so it's buried down much further in the article(s).

The violations for keeping Alexa recordings say they are for "children's privacy". So evidently what is alleged to have been done is not a problem for adults. I wonder how they expect Amazon to distinguish a "children's recording" from an "adult recording"?

Maybe Amazon has actually done something wrong here. But the article(s) do sound at least a little fishy. And the media reporting this is certainly not to be trusted. So I am officially neutral at this time. Until more information comes out and is verified (and reported accurately). At this point, I think Amazon may have done something wrong. Or they may not have. I don't normally defend Amazon. I have some of their products, but I am not a fan-boy. But this article, and all the other ones similar to it, sound a little fishy to me. I'm not sure we're dealing with the gospel truth or accurate reporting here...

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by haertig

Maybe Amazon has actually done something wrong here. But the article(s) do sound at least a little fishy. And the media reporting this is certainly not to be trusted. So I am officially neutral at this time. Until more information comes out and is verified (and reported accurately). At this point, I think Amazon may have done something wrong. Or they may not have. I don't normally defend Amazon. I have some of their products, but I am not a fan-boy. But this article, and all the other ones similar to it, sound a little fishy to me. I'm not sure we're dealing with the gospel truth or accurate reporting here...

Man, everything you said sounds so common sense, I was nodding along with your points and agreeing with them. But then I went and read the article.

Originally Posted by haertig

It's funny that all the articles I've recently seen on this insist on talking about the Ring camera thing. After they've put that in headlines, they have a byline far down in the article that says "The Ring violations were from before Amazon acquired the Ring company, and have since been corrected." But saying that up front doesn't really fit the agenda, so it's buried down much further in the article(s).

From the article:

In a separate lawsuit, the FTC seeks a $5.8 million fine for Amazon over claims employees and contractors at Ring — a home surveillance company Amazon bought in 2018 — had full access to customers' videos.

Amazon is also accused of not taking its security protections seriously, as hackers were able to break into two-way video streams to sexually proposition people, call children racial slurs and physically threaten families for ransom.

Despite this, the FTC says, Ring did not implement multi-factor authentication until 2019.

Amazon bought Ring in 2018, new weaknesses existed and did not correct them until 2019. Additionally:

In addition to paying the $5.8 million, which will be issued as customer refunds, Ring would have to delete customers' videos and faces from before 2018, notify customers about the FTC's actions and report any unauthorized access to videos to the FTC.

So no. It has not been corrected.

Originally Posted by haertig

The violations for keeping Alexa recordings say they are for "children's privacy". So evidently what is alleged to have been done is not a problem for adults.

Right:

The alleged practices would violate the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which requires online companies to alert and obtain consent from parents when they gather data for children under age 13 and allow parents to delete the data at will.

Originally Posted by haertig

I wonder how they expect Amazon to distinguish a "children's recording" from an "adult recording"?

From the article:

The FTC alleges Amazon held onto children's voice and geolocation data indefinitely, illegally used it to improve its algorithm and kept transcripts of their interactions with Alexa despite parents' requests to delete them.

Amazon would not be able to use data that has been requested to be deleted. The company also would have to remove children's inactive Alexa accounts

[haertig]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Amazon bought Ring in 2018, new weaknesses existed and did not correct them until 2019.

That's the thing when we blindly trust the news media. Amazon could have bought Ring on Dec 31, 2018 and corrected things one day later, on Jan 1, 2019. The media doesn't specify. They just say "2018" and "2019". So we could be talking a two year delay, or we could be talking a 1 day delay. Adding two factor authentication for a huge user base is not something that can be done in an hour. You've got to write the code - for different applications: Android, iOS, Web browsers, etc - you've got to test the code - you've got to do end-user acceptance testing - you've got to do regression testing to make sure you didn't break some previously existing feature - you've got to hold code quality reviews - you've got to actually deploy the code updates to millions of users - you've got to prepare a large scale rollback if things go awry in the deployment (and hope you never have to fall back to that!) "The code" is not insignificant. It's not just a one-liner in an app. You've got to design databases to track 2FA data for every single account, you have to test the speed and the scalability of your database design, you've got to coordinate multiple, redundant databases that are geographically dispersed to keep your app's uptime near 100% - you've got to take privacy into account, which usually means encrypting your database which definitely complicates things, but is required anyway - this is not trivial stuff as some seem to think. It does take a while when you are handed a pile of crap and told to turn it into a pile of gold. I've been there, done that, for software like this. Luckily I am retired now and don't have to put up with it, or the judgments of how things were handled, anymore.

Again, I am not pro-Amazon on this. But I am at least willing to look at "the other side of the story". "From 2018 to 2019" is not necessarily an unreasonably long timeframe depending on what had to be done, and the specific dates in each year that we are talking about.

I will freely admit that I often times miss the bandwagon, because I am loath to jump on it after the first reports that it's heading down the road. I usually sit back for a bit and try to determine if there is a different, unreported side, before I rush to judgement. Even when the popular thing is to rush to judgement. Which, I admit, tends to make my views unpopular. You can easily see this if you've read my posts here (and the responses to them) over the years. I often appear as the devil's advocate in presenting "the other side". The mods hate me for this, and so do many other users I'm sure. And like others here, I often fail in my attempts to see both sides, and I rush to judgement or respond based on emotion or bias rather than logic. I wish that part wasn't true, but it is.

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

That is cyclic and averages out on a decadal scale. There might be long term changes in solar magnetic activity on scales of thousands or millions of years that we can't do much about. In a few billion years Earth will be toast (but not because of sunspots).

The total amount of heat trapping gases present because of human activity has been increasing for centuries. We can "fix" that.

Humans are completely, utterly, and absolutely irrelevant in the current climate change that is has been confirmed to be currently taking place on 7 of the 8 planets, and 2 of the Kuiper Belt objects, and an asteroid.

Regardless of what humans do, the planet will experience a deep freeze.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

Humans are completely, utterly, and absolutely irrelevant in the current climate change that is has been confirmed to be currently taking place on 7 of the 8 planets, and 2 of the Kuiper Belt objects, and an asteroid.

Regardless of what humans do, the planet will experience a deep freeze.

Seas warming, glaciers retreating, polar ice disappearing and we're heading for a deep freeze? Sounds unlikely to me.

Andrew

[yoyoto]

Originally Posted by haertig

The Echo Dots (the cheapest of the various models) are not great sound quality for music. Nothing with a speaker that small will be. The sound quality is very good for voice however. I find the older Echo Dots have better sound quality for voice than the newer ones, but the newer ones have better sound quality for music (although still not great). The problem with the newer ones and voice is the heavier bass emphasis - it makes voices sound boomy. This is not a show stopper for people with normal hearing, it's noticeable but not a deal killer, but it was a problem for my elderly mom who had some hearing loss. I traded her newer models out for older models and she was much happier. I don't have any of the larger Echos, Shows or any of those so I don't have any personal experience with their sound quality. I've never even seen one of the larger models in person - everyone I know seems to buy the much cheaper Dots. But we're all in the voice generation regarding Echos, not the music generation. My hobby is also to work in photoshop, and when you insert an image teamwork vector there, the sound during insertion is quite satisfactory to me, although I would like better We tend to listen to all our music on those old, large, tuner/preamp/amplifier separate components or on integrated receivers. With speakers the size of a chair.

Really old version works better. I also traded in my new Echo Dots for my old ones. The speaker works much better here.

[Quoth]

Talking speech only needs 300 Hz to 2500Hz
Music & drama needs at least 80Hz to 10,000Hz, though 30 to 15,000 is noticeably better. Increasing the range to HiFi 20 to 20,000 makes a tiny difference, and inaudible to most people.

Small cheap speakers in a small box may do about 400 to 8,000Hz. The speaker diameter and box size sets the lower limit and the weight & stiffness set the upper limit, hence some speakers 8" to 10" and 13"x8" had small stiff cones also on the voice coil and hiFi may have two or three speaker drivers in the cabinet.