Millennial dad ditches Amazon Echo after daughter reveals it’s been secretly listening to family conversations

Technology has made everyday life more convenient, from voice-activated lights to smart speakers that answer questions in seconds. But as these devices become more common in homes, so do questions about how much they’re actually hearing. For one 41-year-old dad, that concern became personal during a weekend dinner with his 20-year-old daughter. In a post shared to Reddit under the username u/attachedhearttheory, the dad explained how his 20-year-old daughter walked into his house, noticed his Amazon Echo, and immediately asked him to unplug it. The post has garnered 37,000 upvotes so far. 

"My 20-year-old kid came to the house for dinner this weekend, walked in, and said, 'You need to unplug your Echo device. I don't want Amazon to listen to my conversation,'" he wrote.

He said he initially dismissed the concern and reassured her that it "waits for a wake word, and she has nothing to worry about." But she asked him to open the Alexa app and check the stored voice history, and that is when he saw it. "There were HUNDREDS of entries. And that was only over the last 2 weeks. I had NO IDEA that Amazon was collecting everything I say," he wrote. The dad added, "The worst part is my 20-year-old looked at me like I looked at my grandparents back when they would post text messages or Google queries as Facebook statuses."

Amazon allows users to review and manage voice recordings through the Alexa Privacy dashboard. In a statement to the Daily Dot, an Amazon spokesperson said, "Customers can choose not to save their voice recordings at all or have their recordings automatically deleted on an ongoing 3- or 18-month basis." Users can also manually review and delete recordings within the app. Recordings are often brief and may occur when background noise or similar-sounding words trigger the device unintentionally. Still, for the dad, the sheer volume of saved clips changed how he viewed the device. 

"I'm proud to say there are no longer any Echoes in my house," he wrote, adding, "I'm a little bummed because all of my verbal 'turn on the lights' and 'lock the door' cues are all out the window, but I'm really ashamed of the fact that at 41 years old I just didn't even think to look into it. Just had blind faith in a company that views me as a number. I'm pretty embarrassed." People's unease around data collection has gradually increased as connected devices have become more common in homes. A 2019 Pew Research Center study found that 81% of Americans feel they have little or no control over the data companies collect about them, and 79% said they are concerned about how companies use that information.  The post expanded into a broader conversation about privacy and smart technology, and other readers showed similar concerns.

u/tiwuno wrote, "Yeah, I thought this was common knowledge for Millennials? Just like how Facebook 'swears' they're not listening to your conversations, but 5 minutes later you'll get a targeted ad about something you've never mentioned till today." u/jessdb19 added, "Anything smart is listening. Fridges, stoves, toasters. Just assume if it is a smart anything, it's listening."

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