Anyone else refuse to have an Alexa

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never even occurred to me to have one!

Same here. I just don't see the point in our house.

There's a lot of great uses for it. I love how easy it is to use as an alarm. You can just peak out loud and set the alarm. If you want to change the time you don't have to fiddle with it, you just speak out loud. Great for snooze also. You can just lay in bed and say "Alexa snooze for 5 minutes" without having to lean over while half awake and hit the button. Another thing I really like about it, is how easy it is to add things to your lists. There is an alexa app that you can download on your phone where you can have lists. I keep my grocery list on it. If I am looking in the refrigerator and see that we're out of ketchup, I just say "Alexa, put ketchup on grocery list" I don't have to go to my phone and add it like I did before. That may not sound like much, but it is extremely helpful, before Alexa, I wouldn't automatically add something to my list as soon as I thought of it, and I lot of times I would forget to record it. These are just two examples, but once you really learn what it can do and how to find uses for it that are useful to you, it really is quite helpful.

Another great use is that you can use it as an intercom for the house. You can even make announcements in the home when you are gone through the app. So I am able to virtually nag my kids from work, while they are getting ready for school.

[Anonymous]

Federal employee here that gets to work from home sometimes. We were given a directive to turn off Alexa, Siri, and all these always listening devices while working so that it cannot hear anything. I just don’t own them and disabled Siri. People can believe what they want but my employer has some reason for this I assume.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Federal employee here that gets to work from home sometimes. We were given a directive to turn off Alexa, Siri, and all these always listening devices while working so that it cannot hear anything. I just don’t own them and disabled Siri. People can believe what they want but my employer has some reason for this I assume.[/quotemy office has the same policy.]

[Anonymous]

Alexa has been caught accidentally recording things without the prompt, and accidentally sending recordings from some people to other people. Not really surprising considering how often it mistakes random sounds for "Alexa." Below is just one report:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-sends-alexa-shower-recordings-to-wrong-person-2018-12

Also, contrary to the initial claim that the recordings are only analyzed by machines, Amazon actually has thousands of people listening to recordings.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/367724/thousands-of-people-listen-to-alexa-voice-recordings

DH bought one against my objections and we leave it unplugged 99% of the time, especially after we realized how lame it was at answering any real questions.

[Anonymous]

Don’t have one and done desire one. We have a smart tv but it’s turned off (as in power strip is off) when we are not using it.

[Anonymous]

Yes

[Anonymous]

It’s on our tv. We don’t use it otherwise, but I assume it is always listening.

[Anonymous]

Of course. They are annoying and don't do anything useful. They are simply one more way of turning us all into WALL-E people

[Anonymous]

It's not completely useless. It's handy for asking general knowledge questions, like "what are the hours of business X" and "What is the weather going to be today?". I have some home automation stuff and it's connected to that so I can turn lights on/off without going around the house. That part is a bit gimmicky until the winter when you can't get your wife to get out of bed to turn off the lights.

[Anonymous]

For folks who bought a Vizio TV
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/vizio-settlement-moves-forward/

[Anonymous]

Never would buy any of those things. They are listening all the time and you hear everywhere on the news on all kinds of situations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never would buy any of those things. They are listening all the time and you hear everywhere on the news on all kinds of situations.

Yes, tech reporting on the news is so accurate. Do you own a smartphone? Do you have any apps installed? Better put on your foil hat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can go onto your account and hear literally everything she's recorded.

Yes, she gets snippets of conversations. It's actually pretty funny to hear!

But I cannot believe that people seem more afraid of Alexa spying on them than they are of foreign interference in our elections. Get a grip.

I cannot believe that you don’t see how s machine recording all activity for citizens doesn’t provide breeding ground for exactly those types of threats. So cool that it can track my purchase, facial and fingerprint id, medical, sleep, tonal pitch, period, money, credit, location, and search history! And it’s all safe with one company that operates all over the world! From A to Z they can have everything. Yay

[Anonymous]

Why would anyone want strangers listening in on their conversations at home?

[Anonymous]

We have one and we use it for three things -- to set timers, to find out the weather, to play music. It's only in our kitchen.