Rachel Withers at Slate.com reports on how…

Alexa recorded a couple’s private conversation and sent it to a contact

The headline essentially gives the whole story away, but I’ll offer the following from the article itself:

A former smart-home enthusiast, named only as Danielle … and her husband recently received a call from her husband’s employee in Seattle, telling them to unplug their Echo immediately. The employee then went on to tell the couple that he had received recordings of their (mercifully) mundane chitchat—a conversation about hardwood floors, which Danielle and her husband had been having.

Yikes!

The big question for those who own one of these devices is: How exactly did this happen!?

When I read the article yesterday, there was no clear answer.  Apparently, one has now been offered by parent company Amazon:

Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like “Alexa.” Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a “send message” request. At which point, Alexa said out loud “To whom?” At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, “[contact name], right?” Alexa then interpreted background conversation as “right”. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.

Sounds like a lot of things had to go “right” for this screwy situation to happen.

I dunno.

Then again, the Echo is extremely popular -and has been since its release!- and this is the first time such a strange occurrence has happened.

Still, be careful what you say around your Echo!