An Amazon data leak has perturbed a man in Germany. The customer got a worrying surprise when he requested his archived data from Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).
Amazon Data Leak
The customer received his data but also received over 1,700 audio files of strangers speaking. The recordings were of someone else in the privacy of their own home.
The man, who has not been named, said:
“I was very surprised about that because I don’t use Amazon Alexa, let alone have an Alexa-enabled device, so I randomly listened to some of these audio files and could not recognize any of the voices.”
Now, everyone’s asking why on earth the conversations were recorded and stored by Amazon to begin with?
The Recordings
The recordings detailed a man in various parts of his home, including the shower. A female voice was also heard on the recordings, along with an alarm clock and music commands. Weather questions to Alexa and comments relating to work and general lifestyle were also recorded.
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The man sent the files to German magazine C’t magazine, which through Twitter and Facebook was able to contact the man on the recordings and tell him of the data leak.
He has not heard anything from Amazon directly.
The only details Amazon has said on the matter is that “This unfortunate case was the result of a human error and an isolated single case.”
Amazon Data Leak: Not The First Time
However, a similar incident happened in May of this year. Can we truly believe the incident to be isolated?
In this case, Alexa recorded a couple’s private conversation they had in the kitchen. It then sent it to a contact at random. The couple’s friend who received the audio file felt it a strange occurrence and so told them what she had received.
In this Amazon data leak case, the company said it was “unlikely to occur again” and explained that Alexa simply misinterpreted the conversation and followed isolated words as commands.
Featured Image: Depositphotos/© Gorodenkoff
