A New Jersey couple wakes up to an hours-long voicemail from an “unknown caller” and is terrified to learn the voicemail was left by their Amazon Alexa

A New Jersey couple woke up to a 67-minute voicemail from an “unknown caller” and discovered it had been left by their Amazon Alexa.

Kate Creegan told DailyMail.com that the message included clips of her telling their ultrasound to dim the lights and her husband talking to their dog, Penny.

“I was checking the message… and I thought, wait, this is me talking in the bedroom,” she said.

Alexa can call your smartphone if you activate the “Find My Phone” feature, but a company spokesperson said the Amazon Echo won’t record or store calls unless it hears the “wake word,” which turns on a light on the device. lets you know that you are being listened to.

Amazon has come under fire for its call-recording devices and faced two separate privacy invasion lawsuits last year, including a claim that it violated children’s privacy rights by refusing to delete minors’ recording history.

A judge ruled that the company had to pay a combined $30.8 million for both violations.

“There wasn’t much talking in the message, most of it was beeping,” Creegan said, but added that she could hear snippets of her telling Alexa to “turn off the lights,” adding that there were “two or three were sentences in which I talked’. to the dog.

When her husband came over about 45 minutes later, “he was talking about dinner … and the pasta sauce I cooked that night,” Creegan said.

Creegan said she didn’t know if she was asleep when the call came in because it lasted more than an hour and her grandson had changed the settings on her phone so unknown phone numbers don’t go through.

Creegan wasn’t concerned about it at first, but when she contacted Amazon a few days later, she said she was connected to a chatbot that couldn’t understand her request.

When she finally connected with a human, Creegan said the representative told her she had been hacked and asked if she knew anyone named Melissa, “because that’s the person who hacked you,” Creegan said.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is wrong,’ and then I got angry about it,” she added.

Hackers can gain access to Amazon Echo devices by installing malware that can turn them into a remote listening device, creating malware that appears to come from a third-party developer, such as ordering food or adding events to a Google Calendar.

Artificial intelligence can also be used to clone your voice, giving hackers access to all accounts connected to the device.

Most of the message beeped, but Karen Creegan could be heard telling Echo to turn off the lights as her husband complimented her pasta sauce (photo provided by Karen Creegan)

Creegan still needed to understand why the entire conversation was recorded and who made the phone call that shared the recordings in a voice message.

It wasn’t until Creegan contacted a news source and asked for help that she received another call from Amazon saying she must have activated something to enable the “Find My Phone” feature on her Echo.

The representative told her to mute her Echo when she went to bed so it couldn’t pick up any calls that could trigger a recording.

Amazon claimed that Alexa does record conversations, but not all and not all of the time.

An Amazon spokesperson told Dailymail.com that the device “woke up” with a word that sounded like “Alexa” – the trigger word to activate the device – and said: “The ensuing call was interpreted as a request for ‘my phone to call’, what started the Find My Phone feature.’

The spokesperson continued, “The Alexa request to your Echo Dot initiated this feature and caused your Echo Dot to call your cell phone.”

“If the call was not answered on your cell phone, it was forwarded to voicemail and the message you heard was recorded.”

Amazon claimed that Karen Creegan likely activated the “Find My Phone” feature that led to the call

The Find My Phone feature calls the person’s cell phone when the user asks Alexa to help them find their phone.

When asked how the device could have been activated while Creegan was asleep, the Amazon spokesperson said that based on the contents of the voicemail, “the ‘Find My Phone’ feature was activated before they went to bed and the customer received the voicemail notification may not have noticed. until the next day.’

Creegan said she didn’t know if she was asleep when she received the call because it lasted more than an hour and her grandson had changed the settings on her phone so unknown phone numbers don’t go through.

An Amazon Echo is a smart speaker that uses artificial intelligence to control lights and appliances, play music, and answer questions about the news and weather.

It wasn’t until Creegan spoke to Dailymail.com that she said she noticed the voice message said the call might have come from her initials: “K C.”

“Amazon ended up explaining it very well,” Creegan said.

Amazon was forced to pay $25 million last year for refusing to remove children’s voice and geolocation data from its Alexa devices

The incident comes after Amazon had to pay two separate privacy violation fines last year for failing to delete children’s data and restrict employee and contractor access to people’s Ring security videos.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled that Amazon had to pay $25 million for preventing parents from deleting their children’s voice and geolocation data collected by Alexa devices.

Amazon reportedly used the data to train Alexa’s algorithms to understand the speech patterns and accents of minors.

It was also forced to pay $5.8 million for watching people’s Ring videos without their consent.

While Alexa data breaches are not common, there are still steps people can take to improve their security, including deleting Alexa voice recordings every night, turning off the microphone and camera when the device is not in use, and not placing Alexa near a window that someone from the outside can access.

It’s also possible to change the ‘wake word’ that activates the device from ‘Alexa’ to a word that is rarely used in your home – this way it won’t activate if a friend or family member named Alexis or Alexa comes over the device.

You can delete voice recordings by simply saying, “Alexa, delete today’s recordings,” and you can change the wake word by saying, “Alexa, change the wake word.”

Both actions can also be performed from the Alexa app, but users should also be aware that deleting voice recordings only applies to that day – so if you want the device to delete your voice recording history, you’ll need to do this from the do app. .