this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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Amazon Echo is reportedly an internet vampire that uses gigabytes of data per day despite being unused, says owner (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 4 days ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/tech@programming.dev
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An Amazon Echo owner has taken to social media to complain about their smart speakers, saying that the hardware is using too much data even when it's mostly unused. Dave W. Plummer, who helped develop the Windows Task Manager and ported Space Cadet Pinball to Windows, posted on X saying that his two Amazon Echo Show devices, which he said he "never" uses, exceeded 4 GB of data usage in 24 hours.

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[–] y0kai@anarchist.nexus 20 points 4 days ago (2 children)

is this an Echo issue or are these people unwitting members of a botnet?

Disclaimer: Commenting before I've read the article.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I mean, it's Dave Plummer. He's pretty switched on.
If he has tinkered with it, he will know what he has done to it.
If they haven't been tinkered with and have been adopted into a botnet, that's a defective product and shit security from Amazon.

More likely it's doing what Amazon has made it do. So, probably audio recordings and any other sensor data and metrics they can gather

[–] y0kai@anarchist.nexus 6 points 3 days ago

More likely it's doing what Amazon has made it do. So, probably audio recordings and any other sensor data and metrics they can gather

I agree this is likely the culprit. Having read the article though, he seems "sure it's not spying".

[–] y0kai@anarchist.nexus 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Now that I've read it, my question stands.

The guy reporting the issue is a pretty well respected tech YouTuber who helped invent Microsoft Task Manager, so I feel like he'd know to check for that, but it was never explicitly mentioned.

Hopefully he figures it out and does a follow up, I'm curious now.

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago

Based on some of the gray beards I know; doing something cool with technology 30+ years ago doesn’t necessarily translate to continued tech literacy.

[–] teft@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Why not just record the packets originating from the amazon devices for a month or so to see what they're doing? Should solve the mystery pretty quickly.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I'm guessing it would be a bunch of Https or tls packets to Amazon domains and IPs

[–] Cruel@programming.dev 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Just break the encryption. Easy peasy.

[–] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Just hack the mainframe