{"id":43522,"date":"2021-10-21T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=43522"},"modified":"2021-10-21T15:09:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T19:09:00","slug":"big-tech-is-watching-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=43522","title":{"rendered":"Big Tech Is Watching You"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Western Journal<\/a> posted an article today about privacy in America.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Those who are wary of smartphones, smart devices and virtual assistants generally cite concerns over their information being recorded and shared without their knowledge.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only fueling those concerns, one woman recently shared that she had found over 3,000 recordings of herself taken by her various Amazon devices.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The woman, who goes by the username \u201cmy.data.not.yours\u201d on TikTok, posts lots of videos on the topics of privacy<\/a>, reviews privacy policies and gives people tips on how to limit (or at least be aware of) their digital footprint.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She started by informing viewers that she owns two Amazon<\/a> Dots and an Echo device<\/a>, and her house uses some smart bulbs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI requested all the data Amazon has on me and here\u2019s what I found,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cSo when I downloaded the ZIP file these are all the folders it came with.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the video, she clicks on the \u201caudio\u201d file and says that it contains 3,534 short clips that her devices recorded, which she tells viewers is \u201cso scary.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

She explained that one recording was of her asking Alexa<\/a> to turn the lights on \u2014 nothing too surprising there. What she was more concerned about was that there was a file on her contacts, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out they have a full list of my contacts from my phone and I never remember syncing that,\u201d she said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the end of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe very last thing that I didn\u2019t know that they had \u2014 I could have assumed that they have but I don\u2019t love that they have \u2014 is my location,\u201d she continued, admitting that she\u2019s \u201cnot totally comfortable with everything they have.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article also explains how you can delete things from Alexa:<\/p>\n

In February, an article by CNBC<\/a> stated that the Amazon Echo \u201csaves a copy of everything you ask Alexa,\u201d which makes sense. You can also delete these recordings \u2014 ironically \u2014 by asking Alexa to delete them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can also change the settings so that recordings are automatically deleted after a set amount of time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the New York Post<\/a>, an Amazon spokesperson acknowledged the voice recording feature and said that the recordings can be deleted at any time or you can change the settings so they aren\u2019t saved in the first place.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe give customers transparency and control over their Alexa experience,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cCustomers can easily review and delete their voice recordings, or choose not to have them saved at all, at any time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cCustomers can import their mobile phone contacts to the Alexa app so they can use features like hands-free calling and messaging; this optional feature, which customers need to set up, can be disabled at any time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, you can grant permissions for the Alexa app to use certain data, such as your mobile device\u2019s geolocation, to provide relevant results (e.g., weather, traffic, restaurant recommendations), and you can manage these permissions in the app.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Did you know about these features?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Western Journal posted an article today about privacy in America. The article reports: Those who are wary of smartphones, smart devices and virtual assistants generally cite concerns over their information being recorded and shared without their knowledge. Only fueling … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12378,11670,10253,13887,11827,13455],"class_list":["post-43522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alexa","tag-amazon","tag-privacy","tag-smartphones","tag-the-western-journal","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43523,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43522\/revisions\/43523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}