Amazon's Alexa recorded and shared an Oregon family's conversation without consent, report says

A family in Portland, Oregon, received a nightmarish phone call two weeks ago.

"Unplug your Alexa devices right now," a voice on the other line said. "You're being hacked."

Apparently, one of Amazon.com's Alexa-powered Echo devices in their house had silently sent recordings to the caller, without the family's permission. The person, who happened to be an employee of the husband, was in the family's contact list.

"My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying," a woman who identified herself only by her first name, Danielle, told KIRO 7, a local news station covering Seattle and western Washington state.

"We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house," she said. "At first, my husband was, like, 'no you didn't!' And the (recipient of the message) said 'You sat there talking about hardwood floors.' And we said, 'oh gosh, you really did hear us.' "

Danielle said she felt invaded after listening back to her own conversations, silently captured by an eavesdropping machine. "I'm never plugging that device in again," she said. "I can't trust it."

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company told KIRO 7 in a statement, "Amazon takes privacy very seriously. We investigated what happened and determined this was an extremely rare occurrence. We are taking steps to avoid this from happening in the future." It was not clear what type of Echo device was involved.

Amazon's chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post.

Danielle told KIRO 7 that the device did not tell her that it would be sending the recorded conversations.