Amazon Alexa records and shares woman’s private conversation

AN American couple were horrified when a chat they were having in their own home was sent to one of their colleagues via their smart speaker.

AN American woman has claimed her Amazon Alexa smart speaker recorded a private conversation and sent it to someone on her contact list, US media reports.

The woman, identified as Danielle from Oregon, received a phone call from one of her husband’s employees in Seattle, who received a recording of the conversation.

In a TV interview, Danielle holds up a number of Echo Dots — a line of smart speakers developed by Amazon — claiming “it was one of these that sent it.”

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An Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker.

“We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house,” she toldKIRO-TV news.

“At first, my husband was, like, ‘no you didn’t!’ And the (recipient of the message) said ‘you sat there talking about hardwood floors.’ And we said, ‘oh gosh, you really did hear us.’”

She claims that after calling Amazon, an engineer on the Alexa team investigated and concurred that the incident indeed happened.

The Echo Dot in a bathroom of $1 million "House of the Future" in Victoria. Picture: Hamish Blair

“Amazon takes privacy very seriously,” Amazon said in a statement.

“We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence.

“We are taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future.”

Tech experts recommend pressing the hardware button to disable the microphone when you are not using your smart speaker.

This originally appeared in Fox News and has been republished with permission.

Originally published as Amazon Alexa records and shares woman’s private conversation