BERLIN, July 9 (Xinhua) -- There is no clarity on how minors and uninvolved third parties could be excluded from data collection by Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa, said an assessment published by the German Bundestag's research service on Tuesday.
When using Alexa, which is activated through voice commands, people do not always know the amount of data it collects, the document said.
Personal information revealed by minors living in a household equipped with a digital voice assistant, as well as by third parties who are not aware of the presence of a voice recorder, could be "intercepted" by Alexa, it noted.
The software has been shown to be activated "regularly and inadvertently" without users noticing and to collect and process data without users' knowledge and consent, the report said.
The German parliamentary service said that it was "unclear for what other purposes Amazon could use its data in the future." Furthermore, data theft from the Amazon Cloud "cannot be ruled out," and Alexa users could be "particularly severely" affected given the mass of information stored online.
Amazon has recently admitted that its employees listened to and transcribed thousands of conversations recorded by Alexa each day without the users' knowledge or consent. The U.S. company said it collected the data in order to improve customer experience.
"Without recognizing the activation word, no voice recordings are stored or sent to the cloud, and Echo speakers (running Alexa) give a clear visual indication when data is streamed to the cloud," according to a statement by Amazon sent to Xinhua on Tuesday.
All Amazon Echo speakers are equipped with a mute button that electronically disconnect power to the microphones and cameras, making it "very easy for customers to control when Alexa is able to recognize the activation word."
Amazon emphasized that its customers can "view, listen to and delete all voice recordings associated with their account at any time."
The German Ministry for the Interior has stated that users of digital voice assistants consented to the processing of their data in the initial software installation and had to assess for themselves whether this posed a risk, according to a response to a parliamentary inquiry from the Green Party.
"This essentially means that those who put a device like Alexa in the apartment are themselves to blame if it comes to such serious violations" of privacy, criticized Konstantin von Notz, deputy leader of the German Green Party's parliamentary group.
A recent study conducted by the German Postbank showed that almost every third person in Germany used a digital voice assistant, an increase of 12 percent compared to last year.
The study also showed that more than half of German families actively used digital voice assistants, such as Alexa or Apple's Siri.
