Amazon Alexa-Powered Device Recorded and Shared User's Conversation Without Permission

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN 0.44% said that one of its Echo home speakers mistakenly recorded a private conversation and sent it to a person in the owners' contact list, an incident that raises questions about the security of such voice-operated devices. Confirming a report by a local television station in Seattle, Amazon on Thursday said that the Echo device misunderstood pieces of a conversation as commands, causing it to think it was being instructed to send the message. "As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely," a spokeswoman added in a statement. The incident was first reported by KIRO 7, which aired an interview with a Portland, Ore., user identified only as Danielle. The user said that one of her husband's employees had received a recording sent from inside her house.