Select a region
You might want to turn down your TV if you’ve got an Amazon Echo, because you could risk getting some surprise deliveries.
A TV news anchor has accidentally triggered viewers’ devices while discussing another story about accidental Alexa purchases.
According to CW6 San Diego, when the newsreader said: “I love the little girl saying ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse’”, Amazon Echos across the city tried to purchase dolls houses.
In the future we'll spend our time disabling stupid IoT devices to prevent our fridges gambling our savings in Vegas https://t.co/5Rc8Gr80NZ
— Hari Kunzru (@harikunzru) January 7, 2017
He had been discussing the story of a little girl who had inadvertently ordered a 170 dollar playhouse and a huge tin of biscuits after talking to the family’s Echo Dot whilst playing. The order arrived the next day to the confusion of her mother who was able to listen back to the recording on the app to find out what had happened.
Buying under voice command is the default setting on the online retailer’s smart speaker, which doesn’t differentiate between voices. A pin number can be set to secure voice purchases though.
Wanna annoy someone with an Amazon Echo?
Walk by and say "Alexa, what are the first 200 digits of Pi?"
And walk away.— Ian Hecox (@SmoshIan) January 7, 2017
Police recently requested Amazon’s file of voice recordings from one Alexa device which may contain evidence from the murder of its owner.
