Alexa listens to more then the wake word. I've had this recommend products on Amazon while my wife and I were having a conversation at the dinner table. It also recommended calling 911 while I was talking about fire.
It's a spying device people willingly put in their homes for the convenience of a timer you can active with your voice.
Edit: It could be that it activated mishearing "Alexa". I don't have hard evidence of mass spying. I think this wouldn't be hard to prove intercepting the data using something like Wireshark. Even if it's encrypted, you could tell by the data size. The recommending products while chatting with my wife anecdote happened multiple times tho, which convinced me to relocate the Alexa device in the garbage. It seems unlikely to me to not mine the voice data to generate ads, or to do law enforcement.
It's a spying device people willingly put in their homes for the convenience of a timer you can active with your voice.
Edit: It could be that it activated mishearing "Alexa". I don't have hard evidence of mass spying. I think this wouldn't be hard to prove intercepting the data using something like Wireshark. Even if it's encrypted, you could tell by the data size. The recommending products while chatting with my wife anecdote happened multiple times tho, which convinced me to relocate the Alexa device in the garbage. It seems unlikely to me to not mine the voice data to generate ads, or to do law enforcement.