Anyone using Alexa in their Mach-E?

[Jimrpa]

I don't recall saying anything contrary to that. What I'm saying is Alexa is not constantly recording your voice and sending it to the mothership. I gurss I should have specified voice in my original post.

They may or may not be recording the other. I would think if they are they would have to be disclosed in privacy policies.

To be fair, your post was quite clear that it stated only listening for the wake word, then handling the voice. Call me jaded, but I think there’ve been a lot of examples of companies conveniently forgetting parts of their agreements.

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[generaltso]

If I can’t remove the icon, I’ll put the car in CarPlay and never take it out.

Hey, there’s a way to get me to use CarPlay, no matter how badly it sucks ????

How will using CarPlay help hide the Alexa icon? The top bar is still visible when in CarPlay.

 

[kgautam28]

Thanks for the official line on these. So when I’m not using any buzz words and no interaction with Alexa I still get almost instant ads on my phone got stuff I’ve been talking about. Even thought I have never searched it in a phone or even interested in that product.
Yet it quite often happens?
And I’m not worried by it, just amused at the frequency of this and the Amazon staff who keep saying on forums that’s nonsense.
Yeah right.

That's Google/Siri spying on you ?

 

[DR.J56]

Less than 24 hours this thread was born and up to 5 pages now! HOT topic with the hive and a lot of buzzing!!!! I myself have a love hate relationship with Alexa. Love what can be done with the little box but obviously HATE the spying. Why can't we just get the LOVE?

 

[AllenXS]

That's Google/Siri spying on you ?

They send stuff to Amazon as well? It pops up there often when I go in to browse stuff.
And I get emails from Amazon with it in.
But yes it happened more on my Android phone than it did on the iPhone.

 

[zhackwyatt]

To be fair, your post was quite clear that it stated only listening for the wake word, then handling the voice. Call me jaded, but I think there’ve been a lot of examples of companies conveniently forgetting parts of their agreements.

The GDPR would be all over Amazon if they sent all Audio back to Amazon.

I'm trying to stick to facts not FUD. The fact is, Alexa does not constantly stream voice back to Amazon. This is verifiable by looking at the traffic. I would be shocked if no security researcher hasn't investigated this very thing.

Another fact, Amazon monetizes people, just like Google and Facebook. Although of the three I think they are the least egregious. Amazon's primary source of income isn't advertising like the other two.

 

[zhackwyatt]

They send stuff to Amazon as well? It pops up there often when I go in to browse stuff.
And I get emails from Amazon with it in.
But yes it happened more on my Android phone than it did on the iPhone.

That's much more likely from tracking your web browsing. These algorithms are very good.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmi...egnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=69ea96eb6668

 

[kgautam28]

Many reasons that are not appropriate to share in a car forum. I do not use Amazon. Period. I don't want Amazon in my car. And as Jim pointed out, they have very strong motivation to track me and what I do in my car.

While your technical explanation for how Alexa works is reasonable, I don't trust Amazon to violate your assumptions and gather more data than you think they are. Maybe they are not doing it with Alexa MME 1.0, but what about 5.0? I don't trust them and I don't do business with them, and it offends me that I have no choice when that OTA comes.

Not really. Amazon has only always upsold what you interact with it. For example items you searched on Amazon show up as ads on other websites. But unlike google no matter what you do, you see ads for it everywhere.

In 5.0 I'd expect Alexa to respond to things differently but not track your driving data. It might do this instead, Alexa add milk to my shopping list. Right now it says, added milk to your shopping list. It might then say, there's an offer on the usual milk that you buy at Wholefoods, that ends tonight at 8pm, do you want me to place an order for it.
Or maybe, Alexa navigate to work, it says sure here's the route. Later it may say, You have some errands in your to-do list that are close to your work address do you want me to remind them?

The idea is to give you your home assistant anywhere you are more likely to use. You are giving more data with your Google maps also, what's to say Ford itself will not track your driving data.

All this data is not sold to anyone. It's not even tied to your name. It's used to personalize the content that's being delivered to make it more relevant.

Unlike TV where an ad is aired irrespective of it's Relevance to you or not you have to see it. But giving you an ad specific to what you're more likely to take interest is personalization. Like recommend movies on Netflix etc.

How it looks on other end is, say you own a company that specializes in helping EV customers. When you want to post an ad, instead of saying let this ad be shown to all users of all forums, you'd be able to select the demographic Better like this. I configure this ad to show in EV forums specially those with Mach E. That's it.
It doesn't give people who run ads here's @mkhuffman and his phone number go can him.

Thats the privacy regulations.

But in general you can always be paranoid or be scared with conspiracies. The truth and facts are what matters. Else we'll see more people wearing tin foil hats

 

[AllenXS]

That's much more likely from tracking your web browsing. These algorithms are very good.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmi...egnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=69ea96eb6668

I’ve seen all that but others defending Amazon. I’ve checked the article before and I’ve also tested it. I’ve also observed this when Microsoft would do the same thing from my cookies decades ago.
It wasn’t from web browsing.

 

[kgautam28]

They send stuff to Amazon as well? It pops up there often when I go in to browse stuff.
And I get emails from Amazon with it in.
But yes it happened more on my Android phone than it did on the iPhone.

If you searched something on Amazon, looked at a few times, say a cool Mach E spoiler,you maybe added it to your cart and we're still thinking if it's worth the money or so. Maybe you're waiting for your birthday to gift it to yourself, Amazon and many others will send you an email, "Hey, it's still in your cart if you're thinking about it", "or you looked at a few if these items, but didn't make the purchase yet, do you need more suggestions".

But this data is not sold publicly. It stays within the company.

But however if you use googles products to do that search such as google search or Google chrome, or talked to someone in Whatsapp about it or Gmail, then what Google does it, brings in all the ads relevant to the product that you searched for, and shows it at various places. But it's not Amazon that gives this data to them.

All or most of the time this information is present on your side, in your phone or browser cookies.

 

[kgautam28]

I’ve seen all that but others defending Amazon. I’ve checked the article before and I’ve also tested it. I’ve also observed this when Microsoft would do the same thing from my cookies decades ago.
It wasn’t from web browsing.

All apps collect data. 99.9% including and possibily hospital related MyChart apps too.

The key is to understand what data is being collected and be aware of how it's being used. Also know how to turn off this data collection or restrict it to happen 'only when using the app'

 

[Jimrpa]

The GDPR would be all over Amazon if they sent all Audio back to Amazon.

I'm trying to stick to facts not FUD. The fact is, Alexa does not constantly stream voice back to Amazon. This is verifiable by looking at the traffic. I would be shocked if no security researcher hasn't investigated this very thing.

Another fact, Amazon monetizes people, just like Google and Facebook. Although of the three I think they are the least egregious. Amazon's primary source of income isn't advertising like the other two.

Two problems:
1. GDPR doesn’t apply in the US. The closest equivalent is CA privacy laws which only apply in CA
2. Do you honestly think that Amazon really cares about actually following the spirit of those laws? At best, Amazon has a massive fleet of lawyers to ensure that they stay “technically” just barely to the right of the double-yellow line. The reality is that they’re probably doing “Tesla FSD rolling stops” on a daily basis and counting on nobody detecting it, or if they did, being able to lobby a realistic challenge against the Borg.

I agree actually, that it’s unlikely that they’re always continuously monitoring audio streams, but there is a good amount of data mining and data fusion going on. Here’s a non-Amazon example: why is this little website suddenly serving me a lot of ads about lawyers who specialize in Auto issues?Better yet - I have never purchased Shokz earbuds, nor have I ever even been to their website. In some of the emails I receive that are running-focused, there are embedded ads from Shokz. Why is this little website serving me multiple ads for Shokz? Oh, and I have apple’s mail privacy features turned on, and every privacy and security feature on iOS and safari cranked down as tight as I can figure out how. So, tell me again about GPDR, regulators, and security researchers??

 

[kgautam28]

Thanks for the official line on these. So when I’m not using any buzz words and no interaction with Alexa I still get almost instant ads on my phone got stuff I’ve been talking about. Even thought I have never searched it in a phone or even interested in that product.
Yet it quite often happens?
And I’m not worried by it, just amused at the frequency of this and the Amazon staff who keep saying on forums that’s nonsense.
Yeah right.

Facebook and Instagram work on peculiar ways. If you liked a post from a friend that just got new Jordans, or interacted with that post and you met him/her in real life, they're more likely to show you their Jordans. So the ads might start to show you some cool kicks.

Otherwise most of the time it's based on your interests and general usage. Slightest chance of coincides or something that's already viral

 

[zhackwyatt]

Two problems:
1. GDPR doesn’t apply in the US. The closest equivalent is CA privacy laws which only apply in CA
2. Do you honestly think that Amazon really cares about actually following the spirit of those laws? At best, Amazon has a massive fleet of lawyers to ensure that they stay “technically” just barely to the right of the double-yellow line. The reality is that they’re probably doing “Tesla FSD rolling stops” on a daily basis and counting on nobody detecting it, or if they did, being able to lobby a realistic challenge against the Borg.

I agree actually, that it’s unlikely that they’re always continuously monitoring audio streams, but there is a good amount of data mining and data fusion going on. Here’s a non-Amazon example: why is this little website suddenly serving me a lot of ads about lawyers who specialize in Auto issues?Better yet - I have never purchased Shokz earbuds, nor have I ever even been to their website. In some of the emails I receive that are running-focused, there are embedded ads from Shokz. Why is this little website serving me multiple ads for Shokz? Oh, and I have apple’s mail privacy features turned on, and every privacy and security feature on iOS and safari cranked down as tight as I can figure out how. So, tell me again about GPDR, regulators, and security researchers??

Yes, GDPR is Europe. And they have given heafty fines to Microsoft and Google in the past. The lawyers have much less success there than here. Point is, it still has an impact overall on how the company does business. Just like every website telling me about Cookies. That came from GDPR.

Targeted advertising really comes from your browsing history with goals of categorizing you into buckets they can send ads to. If you have a Google account, you can see what Google thinks about you. If you have a Facebook account (I know you don't ?) you can see what Facebook has collected on you from other third party websites.

Private browsing modes, using ublock origin, Firefox or Brave's tracking protection features all help.

 

[kgautam28]

Two problems:
1. GDPR doesn’t apply in the US. The closest equivalent is CA privacy laws which only apply in CA
2. Do you honestly think that Amazon really cares about actually following the spirit of those laws? At best, Amazon has a massive fleet of lawyers to ensure that they stay “technically” just barely to the right of the double-yellow line. The reality is that they’re probably doing “Tesla FSD rolling stops” on a daily basis and counting on nobody detecting it, or if they did, being able to lobby a realistic challenge against the Borg.

I agree actually, that it’s unlikely that they’re always continuously monitoring audio streams, but there is a good amount of data mining and data fusion going on. Here’s a non-Amazon example: why is this little website suddenly serving me a lot of ads about lawyers who specialize in Auto issues?Better yet - I have never purchased Shokz earbuds, nor have I ever even been to their website. In some of the emails I receive that are running-focused, there are embedded ads from Shokz. Why is this little website serving me multiple ads for Shokz? Oh, and I have apple’s mail privacy features turned on, and every privacy and security feature on iOS and safari cranked down as tight as I can figure out how. So, tell me again about GPDR, regulators, and security researchers??

General rule thumb with ads, they don't show up if you finished purchasing the product. They're there to compell you to buy. So if you looked or clicked on something related to shokz almost in any of your connected devices, you'll see it. Or maybe someone else did, or you purchased JBL or Bose headphones a year ago, and now they're showing ads to it as people are more likely to upgrade yearly.

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