HACKER Q&A
📣 RemingtonLak

Why are my Echo Dots uploading 300MB of data in 3 days?


I have several Echo Dots scattered throughout the house as well as Google Mini's. Finally trace mac's to their data usage and found two of my 2 Dots that are most heavily used (heavily I mean may be 5 commands total throughout the day to do simple things like lights and outlets, nothing at all complicated like read me news, stories etc.)

In 3 days, each of the 2 Dots uploaded over 500MB of data I don't know what. WTF?

Has anyone scoped it out and see what kind of data is sent? I haven't wiresharked it or anything outside of finally now realizing the data usage.

As a comparison, I use my Google Min for about the same amount of commands of similar types; lights/plugs on|off and also exclusively talk to my harmony remote. Actually G's Mini gets about 3x more commands but in the same period of 3 days, it only uploaded 24MB.

I realize voice files can get large, depending on sampling but damn.. 500MB in 3 days??! That's 500MB each!


  👤 bigiain Accepted Answer ✓
Possibly this: https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/08/ai_in_brief/

“ Yet punters noticed their Google Homes had been recording random sounds, without any wake word uttered, when they started receiving notifications on their phone that showed the device had heard things like a smoke alarm beeping, or glass breaking in their homes – all without giving their approval.

Google said the feature had been accidentally turned on during a recent software update, and it has now been switched off, Protocol reported. It may be that this feature is or was intended to be used for home security at some point: imagine the assistant waking up whenever it hears a break in, for instance.”


👤 slightwinder
I think you wanna correct your numbers. Is is 300 MB? 500 MB? Total or each? Or is this some kind of parody I don't understand?