Is Amazon Alexa Invading Privacy? Analysis of an Ethical Dilemma
By the end of 2018, half of the United States’ population will own a smart home device, whether it be an Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod, Sonos speaker, smart thermostat, etc (Shields, 2018). Smart home devices are great for granting users more convenience in their daily lives. However, with all of these various features comes great risk. If Amazon Pay is enabled on your Alexa device, anyone’s voice has access to purchasing items on Amazon.com through that device. Fortunately, this service is very easy to disable. In fact, all of the privacy and security risk-prone features in an Amazon Alexa device can be disabled (Kleinman, 2018).
Despite this, the majority of consumers are still wary of the risk factors weighing into using a smart home device, particularly an Amazon Echo. The overarching ethical dilemma for Amazon is that consumers, as stakeholders of the company, want a personalized experience when using a smart home device without all of the privacy risks regarding their personal data and private conversations. The data from a survey of 2,000 US residents conducted by technology provider Ooma shows that customers would like the home security benefits from smart home devices, such as intruder alerts, but not the risk of being spied on (Shields, 2018). While this may seem like a very difficult task to execute, Amazon is…
