I'm afraid to have a microphone listening to me 24h

[almagir]

Does anybody feel like me?

I'm afraid to have a microphone listening to me 24h a day.

I would like to try Amazon Echo, but I'm afraid of being hacked and allow hackers to record my conversations.

How are you solving this threat?
Do you think there is a real threat?
Do you feel confortable having an open microphone for the whole day?

[strayfish]

If it's any help, it's only listening for its wake word although it does respond to something that sounds similar from time to time. When that happens, or it gets no response it can handle, it goes dormant again. I can't comment on the hacking issue, I'm not technical enough for that, but my initial guess is that hackers would need to get past your router and into your network first so I'd make sure that's buttoned down with all its securities in place. I'll leave it now to others here who will have more reassuring (or maybe alarming - in which case I'm all ears too!) comments to make.

[asianrocker]

If I tell the OP the REAL deal, she would hide in the caves for the rest of their lives. LOL. So I'm 

After I watch snowden movie though I found myself covering my laptop cam from time to time.

[malliekm]

I feel like it's a real threat but it didn't start with AIs.  It's just the latest in a line of devices (known and unknown) to become more desensitized to our loss of privacy.  Do I think about it?  I try not to.  I'm totally submerged in the AI world.  If you want privacy, I'm sure there are some caves in Serbia that are still available!  I justify my AI habit by saying I can't think of one thing Big Brother would find interesting enough about my life to "spy" on me.  I remember thinking when microchipping dogs became available that it was just the beginning of Big Brother keeping track of humans as well.  Surprise!  Look how far we've come.

[strayfish]

If I tell the OP the REAL deal, she would hide in the caves for the rest of their lives. LOL. So I'm 

After I watch snowden movie though I found myself covering my laptop cam from time to time.

I definitely cover mine!

[renegade600]

no different than most security cameras.  I remember a warning in the agreement about the dropcam where they said they could be viewing your videos for technical issues.    or something like that. 

but so far only google home mini has been caught recording conversations.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-home-mini-secret-recording-fiasco-2017-10

that said, personally I don't worry about it.  I am willing to bet if amazon was secretly recording your conversations, someone would have caught it by now. 

[mike27oct]

To OP,

Our every,move is tracked by our cell phone's current location.  You have mics in laptops, as well as cameras, and your phone has both.  Our bigger threat is that hackers can get into our cell phones easily and steal our data (see recent programs on 60 minutes.)

Amazon does not give a rip about our nconversations  Neither they nor Google are recording our conversations even if there is lots of fake news that they are.

[jdiciacco]

Toy can mute the microphone by pressing the microphone button on the top of an Echo Dot

[almagir]

I think we need another smart assistant to control and enable/disable all the microphones and cameras we're going to have at home