If you don’t trust your husband to not use the feature again (although “turn on do not disturb” might solve the problem completely), see if you can put the Echo app on your phone and log in with your Amazon username & password, and don’t associate your Alexa with his Amazon account.
I bought an Echo Dot for my parents and it’s connected to my Amazon account (they don’t want it on their account cuz…reasons?) and I can do this “drop in” on them via the Echo app on my phone. Needless to say they don’t like it. The only thing keeping me from doing it is me promising not to do it. If they put Alexa on their account, I couldn’t do it at all.
Wow, I’m glad I was notified of this feature. I could’ve seen it touted as an “intercom” system, if it wasn’t for the fact that it works remotely with any user that’s granted access. That just leads to spying. And with this feature, unlike a phone call, you don’t get a choice about whether you want to interact with that person in the moment. It just does it on their prerogative. I’m glad it’s turned off by default. I have no problem with Alexa otherwise, and in the right use cases this drop-in feature is useful to check in on an empty house, but the ability to take it too far too quickly is a bit much. I’d definitely talk to your husband about turning this feature off permanently. He can call you like a normal person.
Mikemike2, also, I don’t think this is at all similar to devices that have cameras/microphones/speakers built in. It isn’t about the fact that the Echo has these items to begin with, it’s that the Echo can do the “drop in” without warning and without your choice once it’s been enabled, and that this is considered a “feature”. On phones and laptops, it’s your personal device tied to only you (presumably) so you get a choice as to whether you set your calls to automatically pick up, you get a choice to install any walkie-talkie apps. And nobody can randomly access your camera/speakers/microphone without your express permission or by hacking. But the Echo is a shared device by virtue of it being for an entire home, and the person who is attached to the account can change the settings whenever they want regardless of the other people in the house. The major difference is Alexa has made this a feature rather than something people would normally need to hack. With phones and laptops, people are scared of others hacking into their camera/microphone and watching/listening without them knowing, which is silly, that’s extremely unlikely to happen. With Alexa, no hacking necessary, that’s a feature. All the other Alexa stuff like the recordings and such, I don’t care about, it needs to do that in order to function. I do care about the account holder having a feature that allows them to spy at any time regardless of the wishes of anyone else who lives in the house.
According to this article, the “do not disturb” is temporary, but you can also say “Alexa, disable Drop In for my household.” Though it’s not clear to me what it would take to override that.
I second the recommendation to associate the Echo to your own Amazon account. Or you can associate it with both, then you’ll both have full control. (I think.)
p.s. For what it’s worth, Google’s version (Google Home) doesn’t have this feature. It does have a one-way “broadcast” function that lets you yell at your kids remotely, but you can’t hear their response.
I think really what I’m most upset about is the use case that it’ll do video calls with barely any warning. My man, if I lived in a world where I enabled this, I do not want to be ducking and running for cover in my own house because someone decided to use “drop in” and I just got out of the shower and didn’t put any clothes on yet. Ridiculous. A home is a sanctuary and letting people call you willy-nilly without the choice to say “no” unless you remember ahead of time to enable “do not disturb” would drive me up the freakin’ wall. I mean, there are two steps involved in getting to this point, “enable drop in, enable with someone not my husband” but it’s still a use case I never want to run into. Even if it was just my husband, like someone mentioned upthread, sometimes you just want the knowledge that you’re farting in peace.
It sounds like you are completely paranoid. It’s a feature to be able to converse over Amazon Echos (“Drop In”) and I’m betting that’s exactly what he’s using it for If he’s into tech as you state he is, not to spy. It’s a cool feature and that’s probably why he’s trying to use it.
Sure, but let’s consider it from her point of view. Now he can monopolize her time whenever he wants. Oh, he forgot about the time difference and she’s asleep already and he’s talking to her and waking her up - not an issue with phones where you set do not disturb times. She sat down to watch a movie, and now he’s trying to talk to her in the middle of it - not an issue with phones where you can turn the ringer off and reply via text. She’s cooking dinner and doesn’t want to be distracted because the oil is hot so she left the phone in the other room - doesn’t matter, he can jump in at any time through Alexa and distract her at a crucial point. Phone calls already solve the problem of talking to each other, or not talking to each other at each person’s choice. The drop in feature takes that away. It would work as an intercom when both of you are in the same house, but as a remote feature it’s more like a phone call you can’t say “later” to. He can be excited about it, and she can also be unhappy about it. They’re both valid.
For the OP: I’ll gladly take it off your hands. I love the Alexa in our home, mainly because it encourages us to play music all the time, rather than watch TV. It’s also handy for making lists; most of the other things I find on it are basically novelties, but having a 2nd one upstairs in the bedroom wouldn’t be bad.
ETA: Or, you could do what others are suggesting and disable this feature. For purposes of marital harmony, I recommend letting the hubby know, too. Just say that “it’s creepy”.
For everyone worrying about eavesdropping by the NSA, or getting hacked: Don’t worry! Your phone is much more useful for that than a speaker in the corner of the room.
There’s also the part where any private/personal time she has can be interrupted at any time without permission. That’s not “inconvenient”-that’s an invasion of privacy.
No, I don’t think you get what I’m upset about. I don’t think he distrusts me or would deliberately try to spy on me for some malevolent purpose. And I am not particularly angry with him, although I do think it was insensitive of him to suddenly intrude on me like that. (He has apologized.)
Like I said, it’s the principle. Most posters seem to get where I am coming from. I liked this comment:
All humor aside, I don’t think most people would feel comfortable knowing that everything they did could be eavesdropped on, even if their daily activities, like mine, were totally innocuous. If I want to talk to myself, sing off-key, or make ridiculous kissy-noises at the cat, I don’t want to feel self-conscious about it. As as I told my husband, the idea of a spouse having the power to randomly listen in on my life without telling me is veering into very uncomfortable territory. Why would anyone even want to have that capability? I sure wouldn’t.
Last night when I wrote the OP, I was pretty freaked out. Today is a new day and I have calmed down. I do trust my husband to turn the feature off (and as some posters upthread have noted, I can disable Echo on my end too, which I fully intend to do). So we (or rather I, since my husband won’t be here for more than a few weeks a year for the next few years) could theoretically keep Alexa. But yeah, I’m not too keen on it any more. The whole experience has left a terrible taste in my mouth.
Or she just, as she says, doesn’t want anyone listening in to her without her knowledge.
Seriously, when did that become an unreasonable wish? Let alone ‘completely paranoid’
Completely paranoid is thinking your husband has installed a bug in the house so might be listening in. Her husband has installed a bug in the house, and is using it to listen in.
You know when phones were invented, you had to answer them to be heard, they didn’t just start broadcasting whatever noises they could pick up to the caller and allow the caller to start talking out the speaker. Not even when caller ID came in… Or programmes like skype. I’m pretty sure that’s because the majority of people prefer to be able to refuse or ignore a call, and not deal with someone or something right now.
I certainly wouldn’t want one installed in my house, regardless of who was on the other end. I don’t see any benefit over existing communication systems, and it has the massive disadvantage of being able to override my wishes in favour of someone else’s. If it was in my house, it’d be unplugged and shoved back in the box, if it was lucky.
I talk to my dogs and bird all the time when nobody is around. I’d be freaked out over someone eavesdropping.
Thing is, my bird now mimics me talking to him and the dogs. So, people get to hear, “OK, settle!”, “Stop it, Ella!”, “Step up, buddy”, “Good girls”, “Cookie time”, etc in my voice.
No frigging way is she being paranoid. There’s an old interviewing wisdom that goes “treat every mic like a live mic”. Who wants to live their life around a “dont worry it’s probably not listening” mic? And even if we, fairly safely, asume only her husband will ever have access: what’s so awesome for her that he can “drop in” whenever he feels the urge from his different time zone?
My wife and I lived apart for awhile as we were switching cities. We skyped every night but I would not at all like a system where I am unilaterally put into a long distance communication. When I’m alone at home, I want to answer the phone call or door, not suddenly be in a phone call. I can understand some people liking that instant/constant connection but I don’t think it’s crazy to not like it
True, though you’d be surprised as to what is listening to you. Have a cell phone? A lot of those are listening to you all the time. Same with smart watches. Anything where you can say something and have a device basically respond does this. And for those worried about the NSA or other signals intelligence agencies a lot of those have the ability to silently turn on even a land line phone (if they have the right court order)…and many don’t even need that (if you live in China, for instance, this is pretty much the way it is all the time).
I don’t have a device like this in my house, but I think this is something people will have to get used to as automated systems become more and more prevalent in our lives. My WAG is that, eventually, people will stop worrying about it because the benefits will far outweigh the negatives wrt personal privacy (they don’t to date, IMHO anyway).
To the OP, you can turn that feature off…or, as others have said, simply unplug the thing from the power and that will be that.
But he’s not. He’s using it to try to have a conversation (or at least just see what the sound quality is like from an international internet based call from Indonesia to Hawai’i), not to sit around and spy on her (besides it would be a little difficult to completely spy on her as the Echo chimes on and a bright green dot spins around the device while Drop In is active)
He was obviously just trying to play around with a new technology. Wife didn’t like it, so he turned the feature off. Not seeing the big deal here.
This would only make sense if she and her spouse refused to ever use phones. As it is, her husband can already “drop in” from anywhere in the world, just by dialing her number. Or texting her. Or Facetiming.
No - she doesn’t have to pick up, but she doesn’t have to enable her contacts in Drop In, either. This is like refusing to get a cellphone because OMG someone I gave my number to might call me!
I mean - sure. If you don’t want Drop In or Alexa or cellphones, then don’t use them. Whatever. It’s a non-compulsory event. Use it or not as it fits your needs. But Drop In is basically just another phone service. It’s no spookier than any other VOIP device, just because it’s hands-free.
This is gonna be a useful device for people hiring in-home help or sitters. It should be openly discussed with potential help. That will weed out the evil-doers.