Always Listening

In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned a relatively new Amazon product called the Amazon Echo. I find this product very interesting and a little creepy. Typically this device is placed in one's kitchen or living room, if onewants, one can get an aditional "dot" and place it in every room. When one says "Alexa" it starts listening. One can ask it any question and it will google answers, or one can have it turn on music, even make online purchases for you. In the picture below is a list from Amazon of other suggested uses.

When I first heard about this I was kind of creeped out, I don't know much about the technical side of computers but it seems to me if someone, for example a burglar, wanted to hack this device and listen to all of one's conversations, they could find out when one is going to be gone and whether or not one has a security system. It seems to me there could potentially be a lot of problems that come along with this device and the more you connect it to your house the more danger it poses if it does get hacked.

On the other hand just the other day one of my classmates was telling me he had read articles about how our phones are constantly listening to us. Then another student at the table said she is often talking about a certain movie and then she will see adds for that movie the next time she is on her phone, and yet we all have a phone so maybe this product wouldn't be any different. I do think this is a very cool product that would be very useful, but I probably won't be getting one anytime soon. Do you think the Echo is a possible danger, or just a use full tool that makes life easier?