On: Amazon Echo Dot

[Karunamon]

AFAIK, every one of these devices does nothing until a "wake word" is heard, and only then do they record+send.

Having all of the devices listening all the time would be a bandwidth and power nightmare, if not for the sender, for the receiver.

[mavhc → Karunamon]

Correct, of course it can activate accidentally.

https://history.google.com/history/audio has a list of all audio recorded

[jimktrains2 → Karunamon]

What about accidental triggers of the wake word? What about planted "wake words" to record people discussion "inappropriate" things?

[cthalupa → jimktrains2]

For the Echo, at least, it has to use your home network, so you could pretty easily run a packet capture to see if it's ever sending audio out when you don't want it to.

Harder for things with cellular data, though.

[jimktrains2 → cthalupa]

It's a cat-and-mouse game: What if it only sent the clandestine information when it picks up the "normal" word? The point is you don't control the device or its software.