*By Conor White*
Amazon tried to assure customers Friday that Alexa was not spying on them after it was revealed that one of the company's Echo devices recorded a couple's conversation and sent the audio file to someone in their contacts list without their knowledge.
The incident confirmed the fears of many smart-home skeptics : Big Commerce is listening to their every word.
"Not just Amazon ー Google, Apple, anyone with a smart home assistant who has a privacy issue ー they need to come totally clear about what their privacy policy is for your data," said Andrew Freedman, a senior editor at Tom's Guide. "And right now, they aren't saying 'Oh this is how often Amazon Echo is falsely triggered.' So we don't know these numbers, so it's hard to feel totally safe."
A husband and wife in Portland, Ore., received word that their conversation had been recorded when an employee of the husband told them a recording was sent out. The couple has said they thought it was a joke, but they were convinced when the person was able to tell them that their conversation was about hardwood floors.
Amazon says the Echo device, more commonly known as Alexa, simply got confused, and misinterpreted a series of commands.
"There have been a series of issues before where TV sets have turned on Alexa, or things happen where it just misunderstood what people say," said Freedman. "So what Amazon has to do here is make sure its voice-recognition technology is tight, that it just works, and right now it is clearly not there."
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/amazons-unintended-echo).
Oracle soars as it cashes in on the AI boom, Plus: Starbucks shares continue to fall under its new CEO, and does anybody actually want a new iPhone Air?
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
