Out of all this, I’d recommend Brandon Jackson’s YouTube video (15 minutes 30 seconds long) at “The Customer’s Perspective in the Amazon Account Lock out” and his Medium post at “A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon“. His video is dated June 14 2023 and his post is dated June 4 2023. (Both were last accessed on June 16 2023.)
Also, here’s an article by Thomas Claburn in The Register, dated June 15 2023: “Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim“.
In case none of those links work at some unknown point in the future, here’s a summary: Amazon customer (Jackson) notices his Amazon Echo device is not responding. He contacts Amazon and is told an Amazon delivery driver heard someone in his house make a racist remark at the driver who was delivering a package. Jackson checks the date and time of delivery on footage from multiple cameras on his property. He has footage of the driver delivering the package, footage includes audio. There is no racist remark on the audio. He sends the footage to Amazon, it takes Amazon a full week to reinstate his account. During that time, multiple home automation devices which could be accessed by Amazon’s Echo and Alexa now cannot be accessed because he’s frozen out of his account.
In his post and video, Jackson goes into a bit of detail about his home setup. He wasn’t completely locked out of his home automation. He was only locked out of being able to access them with Amazon’s services. But as he points out, the average user would likely not have the skills and knowledge to set up multiple access systems the way he did. So the average user would have been stuck.
I am a bit more skeptical of home automation than Jackson. There is a whole ecosystem of certifications, codes, standards, statutory law, case law, and other requirements for home appliances. The same is true of the electrical distribution system to the home and inside the home. Those ecosystems arelargely unknown to the public because they generally works.
The software controlling those home appliances is still new enough it does not have that same regulatory and legal ecosystem. So it currently relies on consumers deciding where they will spend their money.
But as Jackson points out, most of these home automation systems are concentrated in two or three large companies. And those companies cover so many fields that a customer may have an expectation based on their experience in one area, which can be unrelated to what they’ll experience with the same company in another area.
So, while I am still skeptical of home automation in general, I agree with Jackson that if home automation is used, try to have it running locally.
And in general, don’t rely on big tech companies.