A Portland woman said her family's Amazon Alexa recorded a private conversation and sent the audio to a random contact in Seattle.

"My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying," the woman, identified only by her first name, Danielle, told KIRO 7 in Seattle.

Two weeks ago, according to Danielle, an employee of her husband's who lived in Seattle called and told the family that they were "being hacked."

The man told the family he had audio recordings from inside their house. He sent back the files and indeed, they were the family's conversations, Danielle said.

"I felt invaded," Danielle told KIRO. "A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, 'I'm never plugging that device in again, because I can't trust it.'"

In a statement to KIRO, Amazon said, "Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer's contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right.' As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052

lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker