Bugs found in Alexa’s web services could allow hackers to gain access to voice recordings and personal data stored on Amazon’s servers. Some of the vulnerabilities allowed hackers to even install Alexa Skills remotely on someone else’s device without them knowing. Despite the seriousness of these flaws, you are safe in this particular specimen – but it’s a great reminder of please delete all audio recordings from your smart speaker.
Amazon fixes the bugs and says there is no evidence that any of these vulnerabilities were used, and head of Check Point of Product Vulnerability Research Oded Vanunu says the security flaws were not obvious and an attack would be difficult to execute, in a statement to Wired.
Even if hackers are not likely to be hacked by these loopholes, the fact that they completely existed confirms a point we often make: Digital assistants like Alexa are a privacy risk.
I’m not saying AI assistants are not worth it – Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and the smart devices they charge without a doubt making life easier– but they come with more responsibility than you might expect. Part of that responsibility includes regularly deleting your voting history.
Why you should make a habit of deleting bad assistant voice history
Even if you are not worried about employees of Amazon, Google or Apple listening to your conversations, it is impossible to know that your data is safe from outside access.
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It took a very nuanced test attack from a cybersecurity company to review the bugs in Amazon’s Alexa web services. It is possible that other flaws exist – whether it is in Amazon’s tech or the tech used by other companies – that companies are unaware that could be abused by malicious actors.
However, if not-until-no data was stored in the first place, those hackers would not have stolen much from you. Fortunately, deleting your digital assistant voice recordings does not cost much.
Whatever you do, make sure your digital assistant’s voice history becomes a regular part of your data security maintenance.
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