HN Reader

I also monitor the bandwidth of each device on my network, and my numbers are much lower than his. The totals that I observed over the last 90 days:

  Device         Download     Upload
  ===========  ==========  =========
  Echo Show A   5.487 GiB  1.451 GiB
  Echo Show B   4.343 GiB  1.293 GiB
  Echo A        0.778 GiB  0.739 GiB
  Echo Dot      0.626 GiB  0.580 GiB
  Echo B        0.132 GiB  0.291 GiB
  -----------  ----------  ---------
  Total        11.366 GiB  4.354 GiB

Also note that both devices in the OP are called "echoshow", which means that they have a full LCD display that you could theoretically stream videos on (if you like watching videos on a 5" display with a terrible interface).

And all defaults set? Yeah you’re gonna have a bad time.

Disable voice recording storage Disable "Help Improve Alexa" Manage skill permissions Turn off Amazon Sidewalk

But in the end you have a 3rd party passive listening device. Depends if you trust that 3rd party I guess.

And after that post on x, I’m sure that person disconnected all the Alexa’s in their home right?

I set up a Google Home to show family photos for my grandma.

Got a call soon after that it'd used her monthly home internet allowance.

I guess it didn't cache the wallpaper images.

Provocative: Then why haven't you turned them off?

> doing nothing at all

Doing nothing at all for you.

You never use them.

Unlike Amazon.

I can only imagine that much data usage if it was trying to compress a 24 hour recording of white noise.

Could possibly be solved by blocking connections to device-metrics-us.amazon.com (via the router or a pihole), the devices tend to be quite chatty towards that domain but don't seem to be affected in function if they can't reach it...

Echo show--of course it uses a decent amount of data. If it's awake it will typically be showing an ad on at least part of it's screen. Some of those have images.

We have an impossibly pervasive network of sensor blisters littered throughout our lives, to the point where I don't feel comfortable discussing certain sensitive topics in most other people's homes, but every step of the way most normal people have given the same refrain: "oh, the tech companies probably already have all my data anyway"

Now that those tech companies are working closely with an American regime that seems increasingly willing to disregard the rule of law and public perception to round up people they deem undesirable in large numbers and put them in concentration camps, and we have natural language processing tech that can pretty effectively filter through large amounts of text for some semantic analysis, I hear some of the more attentive people coming to the barest hint of a realization that this situation is unacceptably dire

It really seems to me like we are cooked

This is click ait, right?

In 2025, can't believe there's still no open-source alternative to these devices.

Seems like something is seriously wrong. This is not normal. It's not caused by "improving Alexa" or Sidewalk.

I'm sorry but what was expected here? They're designed to be corporate wiretap devices.

He also has a 25 Gbps Internet connection - not really a huge problem here

I had a similar issue 2 years ago[0], tracked it down to a device metrics hostname and then blacklisted the DNS for it. That stopped the huge data use and seemed to have zero affect on the device functioning. It's still working just fine today with that host blocked.

[0] https://www.marcroberts.info/2023/echo-show-uploading-data-c...

It might be used as a hub for other devices via Amazon sidewalk [0]...

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk

I used to have the Rumble app installed [1], and I uninstalled it when I saw it was using gigs and gigs of data on my phone, even when I wasn't using the app. I'm sure I opted into some permission at some point, but I really didn't like the idea of them constantly sending data to their site at the expense of my data plan and battery, so I removed it.

Now I think this stuff is the norm though; I guess bandwidth is so abundant and cheap for the average American that they don't realize how much is actually being used?

[1] I'm not conservative but there was a creator I liked that was banned from YouTube and was uploading to Rumble.

I was able to effectively stop this behavior by shooting my Echo with a rifle. I hope to hang its rent carcass above my fireplace soon

By the way, "that person" is Dave Plummer, an ex Microsoft employee. He made things like the Windows Task Manager and the infamous file copy window. His YouTube channel has interesting behind the scenes information on historical Windows decisions.

Well this easily happens and is just the result of a simple mistake: you bought an amazon echo

This is easily fixed by disconnecting and shredding any such devices you own!

I hope this helps!

I ditched having any smart stuff I can avoid. One of my best friends on the other hand has everything he can, or he had. I don't know. The amount of cameras and the lack of security upgrades on those devices gives me chills.

I have been worried about it since I found my ISP router back in the day spent 10G/week by itself when nothing is connected. Wtf

Yeah? I mean that's their purpose, why is this surprising to anyone?

person buys the literal telescreen from 1984, and is surprised it's the telescreen he paid for.

color me shocked.

Does anybody have suggestions for a device similar to the echo, but with no microphone? I want whole house speakers on a budget, and the Echo's music group feature seems to do what I want, but I have no need for the microphone.

Because they continually download and serve commercial ads, upload telemetry, and upload everything they hear regardless of wake word with no way of deleting (per a past privacy-invasive EULA change).

At a minimum, disable the microphone via the switch... which makes them basically worthless and so they've outlived their usefulness.