When Amazon sends you voice recordings of your Airbnb guests…

I love Alexa, but I do sometimes have that nagging doubt that having a device listen to everything I say is maybe not such a great idea, but damn it’s useful. The privacy impact was driven home over Christmas when we rented out our apartment.

I was explaining to someone about the Echo where we were holidaying and brought up the app and showed the history. Sure enough, there was the list of commands our guests had spoken to Alexa. Not just the text though — when Alexa doesn’t understand, Amazon record your voice and make it available for playback. The thing is, she sometimes triggers without saying Alexa, she may misinterpret mid-conversation. So, all of a sudden, I had a history of snippets of private conversations my guests were having, right there on my phone.

Hello there Mr Orwell…