Amazon sent a user someone else's Alexa recordings

Amazon accidentally sent a user in Germany voice recordings and transcipts belonging to another user in a nightmare personal data breach, according to a report by Gizmodo.

Millions of people around the world have some form of smart speaker in their home, and concerns over users' privacy have never been greater. A nightmare privacy breach happened recently for one German user of the Amazon Echo speaker when recordings and transcripts of private conversations inside his home were sent to a completely unrelated second user.

Gizmodo investigated reports from German magazine c't, which was contacted by the second user after he requested a copy of all of his private data from Amazon using the recent GDPR legislation and recieved someone else's data by mistake. This included around 1,700 recordings of the first user and his girlfriend, including audio of him in the shower.

C't Magazine was able to quickly piece the information together to find and contact the victim, who had not been informed of the data breach or even contacted by Amazon. Both parties were eventually contacted by Amazon after the magazine contacted Amazon about the story, but the damage was done. Amazon says that it has resolved the issue with the two involved and has reported the incident to the relevant data authority, which is required under GDPR.

Source: Gizmodo