Smart Speakers and Alexa During a House Sit: What to Know

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Disclaimer: This reflects our own experience and general research into how these devices work, not a technical audit of any specific product. Features and privacy policies change over time. Check current settings and privacy controls directly with the manufacturer for anything specific to your situation. 

A conversation on the TrustedHouseSitters forum about VPNs, and how little real privacy they actually provide, got us thinking harder about something closer to home: the Alexa and Google Home devices sitting in a fair number of the properties we've stayed in. This is what we've learned about how they actually work, what a homeowner can see while you're using their device, and why we now just ask to unplug them.

We're on a six-month TrustedHouseSitters sit in Portugal right now, and this topic came from a discussion we had on the platform's community forum, not from a privacy incident on this specific sit. If you're new to the platform, a 25% discount on membership is available here.

The forum conversation was originally about VPNs, and the point I was making is one worth repeating here: most people's sense of digital privacy is more comfortable than accurate. A VPN protects you on an unsecured network, on public wifi at a cafe or airport, it encrypts your traffic so it can't easily be intercepted. What it does nothing for is the fact that once you're logged into a Google or Amazon account, that login itself is the tracking mechanism, not your IP address. That same logic applies directly to a smart speaker sitting in someone else's living room, one you didn't choose to bring into your life, and don't fully control.

How These Devices Actually Listen

It's worth understanding the mechanics before deciding how worried to actually be. Wake word detection runs on a small, dedicated, low-power chip on the device itself, not in the cloud, and it's only trained to recognise one narrow acoustic pattern, "Alexa" or "Hey Google," not to understand or transcribe speech.

It's closer to a motion sensor detecting movement than a device understanding what's being said. Before the wake word, there's a short rolling audio buffer held locally, a few seconds, constantly overwritten, and never transmitted anywhere. Only once the wake word is actually detected does real transcription begin and audio start streaming to the cloud, and you'll usually see a visual indicator, a light ring changing colour, confirming it's active.

That's the reassuring part, and it's genuinely well documented, both Amazon and Google publish technical detail on this specific architecture because of exactly this kind of scepticism.

The less reassuring part is that false activations are a real, confirmed phenomenon. Independent research has found over a thousand word or phrase combinations that can accidentally trigger a device, some genuinely ordinary. Human contractors at both Amazon and Google were also confirmed, back in 2019, to have reviewed snippets of post-trigger recordings for quality purposes, a real, documented controversy, not a rumour.

And there's a well-known case of an Alexa device in Portland, Oregon that recorded a private household conversation and sent it to a random contact. None of this means the device is secretly recording everything all the time. It does mean the system isn't flawless, and mistakes have real consequences when they happen.

What a Homeowner Can Actually See While You're Using Their Device

This is the part that surprised us the most, and it's not hypothetical. The Alexa device itself is actually Caro's. Before we started travelling, we left it behind at her family's home, and they kept using it day to day, playing Spotify, asking it questions, turning lights on and off. Because the device was still signed into Caro's own Spotify account, something odd started happening whenever Caro used Spotify herself, on her phone, through a speaker with us on the road.

Playback would get interrupted the moment someone back home started using the Alexa. It took us a while to realise why. Once we did, we could see exactly what was happening, Caro's own playlists changing, specific songs and playlists showing up in her account that she hadn't chosen, all because a device sitting in someone else's house, thousands of kilometres away, was still tied to her account.

That's a genuinely useful example precisely because it flips the usual assumption. We'd guess the same visibility likely extends to whatever else that account touches, requests made through other connected services, possibly even something like watch history if a TV or streaming device is linked the same way, though we haven't tested that ourselves. The broader point stands either way: a smart speaker's activity isn't necessarily contained to the house it's sitting in. It's tied to whichever account it's signed into, and that account can be watching, or being watched from, somewhere else entirely. 

This would mean that the home owner probably can see what you ask the smart speaker.

What It Was Actually Like Living With One

On a sit in Italy, the home had smart speakers positioned in multiple rooms, meaning a command could be given and heard from almost anywhere in the house. I'm honestly not a fan of this setup. I don't love the idea of a device that's always technically listening for its wake word, even understanding the local-processing mechanics doesn't fully settle the discomfort. There have been enough real, documented cases of these devices behaving unexpectedly that a level of caution feels reasonable rather than paranoid.

The bigger picture here isn't really about the wake-word mechanism itself, which genuinely does work the way manufacturers describe, narrow, local, and not eavesdropping on ordinary conversation for ad targeting. The real privacy trade-off is what the device is connected to. These devices are tied to an Amazon or Google account, and once you're logged into one of those accounts, a significant amount of activity gets logged and cross-referenced regardless of whether a smart speaker is involved at all, searches, purchases, location history if it's enabled.

A smart speaker in a home you're staying in isn't a separate privacy risk so much as another access point into an account system that already tracks a great deal. That's not a reason to panic, there are real legal limits on who can access that data and why, it generally requires a warrant or your own consent, not open access to anyone who wants it. But it's a more accurate way to think about the actual exposure than assuming the microphone itself is the main concern.

The thing I dislike most, practically, is having a quiet conversation with Caro somewhere in the house and having the device pick it up and respond from an entirely different room. These microphones are sensitive enough to catch even a fairly quiet voice from a distance, and knowing that, even while trusting the local-processing explanation, doesn't make it feel comfortable.

Finding the Balance: What We Actually Do

Our approach is simple. On any sit with a smart speaker, we ask the homeowner directly whether we can unplug it for the duration of the stay. In our experience, most homeowners are completely fine with this, provided it isn't tied into something essential like the heating or security system. If it is genuinely integrated into other functions of the home, that's worth discussing specifically rather than assuming it's an all-or-nothing situation, our guide on what house sitters can and cannot change during a sit covers this same principle for other household systems.

We don't think this needs to be an inconvenience for anyone. It's a short, polite question, not a confrontation, and it respects both a sitter's comfort and a homeowner's setup. For a short sit, this is rarely worth raising as a big issue either way. For a longer stay, like our current six months, it's worth actually addressing directly rather than living with quiet discomfort the whole time.

A Real Gap in Platform Policy

TrustedHouseSitters and other platforms have detailed, specific policies covering cameras and recording devices, explicitly designed to protect a sitter's privacy in the home. Nothing equivalent currently exists for smart speakers and voice assistants, and we think that's worth flagging.

The privacy questions raised by an always-listening microphone are genuinely comparable to those raised by a camera, arguably more complicated in some ways, given how easily these devices connect to accounts, streaming services, and other people entirely outside the property. Until that gap closes, asking directly is the only real protection either side has.

Conclusion

Smart speakers aren't secretly recording every conversation in a house, the mechanics genuinely don't work that way. But they're not fully private either, false activations happen, human review has happened historically, and in Caro's family's case, a device in one location was genuinely visible to someone using the same account somewhere else entirely. Our own solution is simple: ask to unplug it, and treat a homeowner's comfort with that request as a good early signal about how the rest of the sit is likely to go.

Caro and I have completed 20 house sits across 12 countries, driven 19,000km across Europe in our 1998 VW T4, and saved over $26,500 in accommodation costs over three years of house sitting. If you've had a smart speaker experience on a sit worth sharing, good or uncomfortable, DM us @housesittersguide, we answer everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Does Alexa record everything happening in a house?

  No. Wake word detection runs locally on the device using a small, dedicated chip and a short rolling audio buffer, and it only sends audio to the cloud once it detects the wake word. That said, false activations are a documented issue, and some real incidents involving unintended recordings have occurred, so the risk isn't zero.

• Can a homeowner see what a sitter is doing on their smart speaker remotely?

  In some cases, yes. If the device is tied to the homeowner's own account and connected to a service like Spotify, they may be able to see, pause, or interact with what's playing from anywhere, even while travelling.

• Should I ask to unplug a homeowner's smart speaker during a sit?

  It's a reasonable, low-friction request, and most homeowners are comfortable with it, provided the device isn't tied into essential home systems like heating or security. Raising it directly and early avoids any discomfort building up over a longer stay.

• Is there a platform policy protecting sitter privacy from smart speakers?

  Not currently. TrustedHouseSitters has a detailed camera and recording policy protecting sitters, but nothing equivalent exists yet for smart speakers or voice assistants specifically.

• What should I do if I'm uncomfortable with a smart speaker on a sit?

  Ask the homeowner directly whether it can be unplugged for the duration of your stay. This is a normal, reasonable request, not something that needs to be framed as a confrontation.

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