Amazon’s Alexa recorded owner’s private chat ... and sent it to friend!

AMAZON’S robot assistant Alexa is sup- posed to make life simpler.

But one woman has vowed never again to use the firm’s ‘smart’ Echo speaker, which runs the Alexa software, after it sent a recording of a private conversation to someone in her family’s contacts book.

The woman, who gave only her first name Danielle, told US media how the gadget recorded her family chatting about hardwood floors – and sent the clip to one of her husband’s employees.

Danielle, from Portland, Oregon, found out what had happened two weeks later when the employee rang to say he had received the recording.

‘I felt invaded – a total privacy invasion,’ she said. ‘Immediately, I said, “I’m never plugging that device in again, because I can’t trust it”.’

Amazon’s gadgets start recording after hearing their name or a ‘wake word’ selected by users, meaning words that sound like Alexa can trigger the device accidentally.

Amazon said that Danielle’s incident was caused by an ‘unlikely’ series of events that resulted in the gadget interpreting background noises as requests to record and send audio.

A spokesman said: ‘Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like “Alexa”. Then the subsequent conversation was heard as a “send message” request.

‘At [this] point, Alexa said out loud, “To whom?” The background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, “[contact name], right?” Alexa then interpreted background conversation as “right”.’

The spokesman added: ‘As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.’

In 2016, US researchers found some sounds, unintelligible to humans, can activate virtual assistants such as Alexa, raising concerns about exploitation of the devices by attackers.