So Alexa spies on us? what is the solution?

These days, all online newspapers, newspapers and even sites that never talk about technology, have spread the news that Amazon workers listen to the voice recordings created when we talk to Alexa through Echo devices.
Trying to be objective and without advancing conspiracy and unrealistic theories, it is interesting to understand why Amazon, through Alexa, spies on what we say, if this is actually a strange and dishonest behavior and above all what could be the solution to be calm and take better care of it. privacy with all these modern devices.
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Why Alexa spies on us and what it means

First of all, then, let's see better what it means that Alexa spies on us and how to interpret the news that was published by the Bloomberg site and then rebounded in all the newspapers of the world.
The fact, now confirmed and not denied, is that Amazon employs thousands of employees around the world to collect information in order to improve the digital assistant Alexa . These people are then able to listen to the voice recordings saved in homes and offices using Echo devices and transcribe them and then insert them into the software development process that powers artificial intelligence. In particular, they try to correct the interpretations of the words spoken to Alexa, above all to improve her understanding in analyzing confused words. Obviously, then, among the various Amazon employees who do this job, the funniest and most particular recordings are shared. The registrations sent to Alexa reviewers do not however provide the name and address of a user, but only the number and name of the Amazon account and the serial number of the device (which is however information with which it would be easy to find people if wanted).
The manual and human analysis process of the voice recordings used by Alexa is also quite common for other voice assistants such as Google and Apple's Siri . Both Google and Apple have stated in this regard not to make the recordings identifiable.
In the past, there have certainly been cases of espionage by employees of the Cloud companies, who have been able to access user data freely. By doing some research we have therefore found some of the most sensational examples:

• Evernote, the app that keeps notes in the cloud, had initially given its employees permission to read private notes to improve the app, but following protests it promised that employees would ask for permission to access them. Obviously this is not a great comfort for those who care about privacy, since the company can change its mind at any time and make it easy to read the private notes stored in its cloud (source)
• Google, in 2010, fired an engineer because he used to spy on chat for private use (source), testifying that his engineers can access all the data stored in the cloud.
• Facebook, in 2018, fired a security engineer who used his Facebook login to spy on some women's accounts.
• Other different examples concern the possibility that companies have to read emails in web accounts or to see files uploaded to cloud archives.

While, therefore, there is a problem of privacy on the internet and there will always be due to the fact that the data must be processed by human persons, on the other side there is also the fact that companies still collect usage data of their products, partly to improve their products and partly to collect demographic data for advertising purposes. After all, the cloud is nothing more than someone else's computer reachable via the internet. Cloud companies will then be able to see what's on their computers without anyone being able to stop them. While this is simple enough to understand, going back to reports that Amazon employees listen to our voice recordings remain, in their normalcy, quite shocking. There is no law that prevents Amazon or other voice and cloud assistants companies from looking at data saved by users.
In summary, setting aside stalkers and employees who abuse their access, the reasons why a company may need to review customer private data are as follows:

• Following government requests: a warrant may force a company to consult data to assist police investigations.
• To improve learning and training algorithms, which is why Amazon pays employees to improve its voice assistant Alexa in providing more precise answers.
• To give assistance to customers: if you call the call center of a bank or a company that stores data, the company may ask for permission to view private information to give support.
• Due to violations reported by other users, for example on Facebook when sending threats via private messages.

As a solution to maintaining privacy when using cloud services "> end-to-end encryption.
End-to-end encryption or client-side encryption means that the software used encrypts data on devices used by users, storing only encrypted data on its servers that the company cannot access. This is a possible way in chat services like Whatsapp (which in fact has End-to-end encryption) or as Signal Messenger, the most secure, like email services (we saw in another article the most secure email services with encryption end-to-end). However, it is not a viable way for apps like Google Photos that needs to process photos on its servers to create automatic stories and collages. Furthermore, it would be difficult for voice assistants to implement this encryption because all command processing should take place locally on the device and companies would not be able to use voice data to better train their assistants.
Regarding Alexa, after the various controversies of the case, there is now an option that can prevent the use of our voice recordings for the improvement of the product . From the Alexa App (or also from the Alexa website) you can open the menu at the top left, go to Account> Privacy, go to the Manage how your data improves Alexa section and disable the options to contribute to development of new features. The Bloomberg report, however, says that changing this option will prevent Amazon employees from listening to and transcribing our voice recordings .
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Conclusion

Finally, although it can be disturbing to know that everything we say to Alexa can be heard by someone from across the world, trying to ask Alexa " you spy on me ", you immediately get the answer: " no, I'm in I only listen when I hear the activation word . " This sentence, however, makes clear an important thing: that unless bugs or malfunctions (and there have been cases), Echo devices and those with artificial intelligence Alexa do not listen and do not record what we say if they are not recalled by saying precisely Alexa. If it were the other way around, that is, if Alexa was always listening, then you could be shouting scandal, but currently there is no evidence of this and I don't think Amazon would want to play over his reputation in such a strong invasion of privacy.
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