Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim
- Reference: 1686866542
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/06/15/amazon_echo_disabled_allegation/
- Source link:
Jackson earlier this month published [1]an account of the incident , and yesterday shared [2]a video exploring the issue further.
Jackson says he regained access to his Amazon account on Wednesday, May 31, 2023, after what he characterizes as an unjustified week-long lockout.
This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions
"This wasn’t just a simple inconvenience, though," he wrote. "I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions."
Jackson's smart home wasn't entirely non-functional during this period. Most of his smart home gear, [3]he said , is self-hosted locally, via Apple HomeKit, and not tied to an Amazon cloud service. He could still interact with some devices through Apple's Siri assistant software.
[4]
Jackson attributes the suspension of his Amazon account – which controls his Echo hardware and Alexa software – to an Amazon driver misinterpreting an automated Eufy doorbell audio message.
[5]
[6]
The incident began, he claims, following the delivery of a package on May 24, 2023.
The next day he found he had been signed out of his Echo Show and his other smart devices were not responding. After determining that the lockout had not been caused by excessive failed login attempts, he called Amazon customer service and was told to look for an email from an Amazon executive.
[7]
Upon calling the number included in that message, Jackson says he "was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my 'Ring doorbell' (it’s actually a Eufy, but I’ll let it slide)."
[8]Study: How Amazon uses Echo smart speaker conversations to target ads
[9]Amazon Alexa can be hijacked via commands from own speaker
[10]Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free
[11]Buried in the hype, one little detail: Amazon's Alexa-on-a-chip could steal smart home market
Jackson found this implausible because he had cameras that could verify what happened and because he considered it unlikely that anyone in his family would make such remarks given that "most delivery drivers in my area share the same race as me and my family." Furthermore, he determined that no one was home at the time of the alleged abuse.
"I reviewed the footage and confirmed that no such comments had been made," Jackson wrote. "Instead, the Eufy doorbell had issued an automated response: 'Excuse me, can I help you?' The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message. Nevertheless, by the following day, my Amazon account was locked, and all my Echo devices were logged out."
Jackson disputed the allegations and it took Amazon a week to restore his account.
Reform
"Through sharing my experience, I hope to encourage Amazon to reform and rethink their approach to handling such situations in the future," he wrote. "It’s essential for customers to feel confident in the security and reliability of their services, especially when those services are integral to the functionality of their homes. It’s time for Amazon to take a more customer-focused approach to problem-solving and conflict resolution."
Jackson said while he fully supports Amazon's right to look after the safety of its drivers, he questioned Amazon's decision to disable his system for a week during its investigation. And he said that his video of the incident, provided to Amazon, didn't appear to have any effect on the company's decision to suspend his account.
In his followup video, he emphasizes that the issue for him is Amazon and other tech companies [12]exercising control over products that customers have purchased. It used to be that if you bought a toaster, you owned the toaster, he said, and Amazon or Apple or Google could not deprive you of that product.
The customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns
The Register asked Amazon to confirm Jackson's account of what happened.
Without challenging any of the published claims, an Amazon spokesperson said, "We work hard to provide customers with a great experience while also ensuring drivers who deliver Amazon packages feel safe. In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again."
[13]
The Register asked Amazon to clarify whether Jackson's account was suspended solely based on a claim made by its driver. We've not heard back. ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://medium.com/@bjax_/a-tale-of-unwanted-disruption-my-week-without-amazon-df1074e3818b
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_onpy_gGnyU
[3] https://youtu.be/_onpy_gGnyU?t=177
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZIveYTtKRSyPqAvEhSRwCgAAAUE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZIveYTtKRSyPqAvEhSRwCgAAAUE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZIveYTtKRSyPqAvEhSRwCgAAAUE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZIveYTtKRSyPqAvEhSRwCgAAAUE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/27/amazon_audio_data/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/03/amazon_alexa_speaker_vuln/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/26/opinion_column_alexa/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2018/09/21/amazons_alexaonachip/
[12] https://youtu.be/_onpy_gGnyU?t=25
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZIveYTtKRSyPqAvEhSRwCgAAAUE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
He clearly understands how it happened, but didn't expect that a misheard phrase would lead to Amazon turning off everything. That's not a strange assumption to come to, because disabling purchased products for an unrelated event, whether it happened or not, is the kind of stupid thing that can lead to lawsuits and Amazon should know that.
He works for Microsoft so really he should have known and expected that the big tech company providing services to him would do its absolute best to shaft him as soon as it could.
Well-experienced engineers in IT tend to think of these scenarios and don't make assumptions expressly when it comes to availability and 3rd parties.
What, no backup strategy?
"This wasn’t just a simple inconvenience, though," he wrote. "I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions."
Hopefully, the first question being: why did I tie my house so thoroughly into a third-party cloud, without considering what it would do to my lifestyle if it was interrupted in any way?
If he had the nous to do some of it locally, what was the gain supposed to be in outsourcing the rest?
Not his computer in control, means it wasn't really his home...
Re: What, no backup strategy?
If he had the nous to do some of it locally, what was the gain supposed to be in outsourcing the rest?
Convenience.
Not his computer in control, means it wasn't really his home...
I... erm... what??
For 'wasn't really his home' you mean 'was slightly harder to turn the lights on and off' surely?
Re: What, no backup strategy?
…and my primary means of interfacing…
emphasis mine
Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity
"I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions."
Jackson's smart home wasn't entirely non-functional during this period. Most of his smart home gear, he said, is self-hosted locally, via Apple HomeKit, and not tied to an Amazon cloud service. He could still interact with some devices through Apple's Siri assistant software.
So let me get this straight:
You set up a "smart home" using devices dependent upon internet connectivity with a cloud provider (Amazon's Echo).
And then set up a "backup" plan...that ALSO depends upon internet connectivity with a cloud provider (Apple's Siri).
And, as a worker in the tech industry, you see / saw no problem with this implementation??
------------------------------------------
Never mind a cloud provider refusing service, have you never heard of the phrase "internet outage" ??!
I think you should be fired from your day job. Apparently your idea of what a functional "backup plan" is, is completely incompetent. You shouldn't actually be allowed near any system as you show no ability to implement technology in a redundant manner, you show no understanding of the concept of BOTH "mission-critical" and "user-focused".
Your fail is HUMILIATING and should follow you for the rest of your working life: you should spend the next few years considering the error of your ways and what you can do to redeem yourself in the eyes of Tech Geeks worldwide.
Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity
Do you have backups for everything you've ever bought for personal use, no matter how inconsequential the purchase was and how minor an inconvenience a failure would be? I seriously doubt it. This was not a person who set up this system to provide life-critical services to a client who required extreme fault tolerance; it was a person setting up some conveniences in his own house.
Answer this question: where is your email handled? All your accounts, every one of them. Is it all on your own mail server? Congratulations. Now that server, it's on hardware you control, right? Nobody else is running it? And that server is in a building you control, and by control I mean that you own it so nobody can lock you out, right? And that server has a backup which you also own, in a different building in case the first one burns down, and you control that building too? And the email address that owns the domain for those private servers is also controlled entirely by you in the same way, so you can't be locked out through that channel either? My guess is that your personal email does not have this level of backup, and it probably falls far short of that ideal. I have taken a couple steps in this direction, but I don't have that level of control or certainty. Yet, our email is far more important to our lives than smart lights, if we decide to buy them.
By the way, if you actually have this level of control over your email, consider other services that you also rely on. Can you honestly claim to have redundant backups for everything you rely on, not just the most important ones? If you do not, then your criticism of this guy applies to you as well. Fortunately, it's unwarranted, and I don't think there's anything wrong with you or that you should spend the next few years overcoming that humiliation.
Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity
Having listened to his Youtube video it seems he did have a functional "backup plan" that would cover an internet outage. As his smart home is hosted locally he could access the devices through his server. He even has backup batteries for his devices to handle limited power outages.
His point was unlike him most people won't they will just have alexa and their smart lights etc will stop working if Amazon withdraw Alexa.
Meet Amazon's new head of corporate ethics and responsibility, Matthew Hopkins.
Keys not yours
I have to admit, it is a bit hard to muster empathy here.
A person gives, willingly, the keys to his home automation services to a third party with zero accountability and expects everything to go peachy? And the part where "Siri... could...", well that is just another third party with zero accountability.
What do you expect? Buy stuff controlled by others and it all just works all the time? And then all that electronics junk produced. A house is built for 50, 100 or more years. The installed electronics are not even properly owned but licensed and have life-spans ranging from 2...5 years, if you are lucky, and you must hope not to be proud owner of electronic bricks after yet another premature end-of-life notice.
Is this really worth the effort? Paying for the privilege and giving away the keys at the same time?
Not to mention the surveillance... That will not be disabled, of course...
Re: Keys not yours
Just wait till the power company locks your out of your “smart” thermostat.
If you have to ask for permission, you don’t own it.
Re: Keys not yours
BMW are already doing it with their heated seats..
Incompetent surveillance
"the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my 'Ring doorbell'"
Doesn't Amazon own Ring? I expect if they had checked their records, they would have realised they didn't have any and therefore it was not in fact a Ring doorbell. Ergo, they didn't check, and just switched off a customer on the say-so of a driver. Be nice to your driver. Be very, very nice.
It used to be that if you bought a toaster, you owned the toaster
Yes, but if you go out and willing purchase, with your own money, a Talkie Toaster instead, you can't really start complaining about it afterwards just because you didn't think the consequences of doing so properly.
America and its "cancel culture" at its best.
Whatever the "racist comments" might have been interpreted to be, in most of the rest of the world they wouldn't even be considered racist.
Hypocritical
> "It used to be that if you bought a toaster, you owned the toaster, he said,"
Fancy hearing that coming from the mouth of a Micro$oft employee, the same Micro$oft who thinks I don't own the computer I built with parts I bought myself with my hard-earned savings and is constantly pushing me obnoxious ads through Window$ and is seeking to take away my ownership of my PC further by forcing CPU makers to include their Pluton silicon and "secure boot" as well as obnoxious DRMs...
So... maybe not use smart home hardware? Not only you can be locked out at any time but the usually stuff goes out if support in just a few years and t spies you more that Microsoft and Google combined.
Oh and the safety standards tend to be so low they may as well not be there.
This guy is an engineer at Microsoft, and doesn't get the whole cloud connected BS that is behind all of his "smart home"devices? It sort of explains a lot, doesn't it!