This story began when I was giving a TV interview[1] about a recent incident where police in the U.S. obtained a search warrant for an Amazon Echo owned by a murder suspect in the hopes that it would help convict him — or at least shed light on the case (the case is not relevant to our story, but here’s an article[2] about it, anyway).
The Amazon Echo[3], a smart helper running Alexa (I know I’m going to make some of my friends at Amazon angry by writing it, but Alexa is Amazon’s Siri), is a very cool device that can do anything from playing music to ordering things from Amazon. To activate it, you just have to say “Alexa” and then ask for whatever it is that you want: “Alexa, please wake me up tomorrow at 5 am.“
The day after my interview, several people told me that every time I said “Alexa” on TV (and, as you can imagine, I said it several times during that interview), their device turned on and entered a waiting-for-your-commend mode.
It took me a few seconds to grasp the meaning of what they had just told me… and then I had one of those OMG moments. This is exactly the kind of thing I love to hear. Immediately I started planning what I would say to mess with Echo owners who were unlucky enough to be watching the next time I was on TV. Actually, I don’t even need them to watch — I just need them to leave the TV on.
Finding the best way to mess with Echo owners
In the process of learning more about Alexa’s capabilities, I found an ...
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