Amazon — Data Breach

Executive Summary

Bloomberg reported that Amazon employs thousands of workers worldwide to listen to voice recordings captured by Echo speakers in order to improve Alexa's speech recognition. Workers in offices across Boston, India, Romania, and Costa Rica transcribed and annotated up to 1,000 audio clips per shift, with some clips containing sensitive personal conversations. Amazon had not explicitly disclosed that humans — not just algorithms — reviewed Alexa recordings, and a follow-up report revealed reviewers could also access customers' home addresses.