Amazon Alexa Devices Receive ‘Away Mode’ Skill to Keep Burglars Away

• One of the latest Alexa Skills to make it into Amazon’s smart speakers is ‘Away Mode’ which is designed to offer an unconventional means of security.
• The skill allows your smart speaker to play conversations which replicate natural human conversations when you are not at home.
• ‘Away Mode’ can help against potential burglars by making it seem like a group of people are at your home having a conversation. 

One of the most intuitive Amazon Alexa Skills was recently released to help Amazon’s smart speaker owners to keep burglars away. If you plan on leaving your home for an extended period of time and want to make it seem like there are people in the house, you can set up the ‘Away Mode’ Skill which will continue to play a variety of conversations to ward off any trespassers.

Some of the pre-recorded conversations include a parent-teacher association meeting discussing memes, a group of people arguing over the rules of a board game and a couple breaking up with TV noises in the background. The Alexa Skill was created by Hippo Insurance, who hired writers from Saturday Night Live and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, to create unique conversations that would make it seem like your home is full of people. Hippo describes the skill as “the first ever home protection skill that harnesses the power of human awkwardness to ward off unwanted visitors.”

Image Courtesy of Amazon

Away Mode is definitely not the first Alexa Skill of its kind with Skills like Burglar Deterrent already available. But unlike other offerings, ‘Away Mode’ comes with natural sounding conversations which can’t be discerned from actual conversations that happen in homes. The Skill is free to enable and is available to download from Amazon right now.

While we cannot guarantee that your home won’t be robbed when using the ‘Away Mode’ skill, it can definitely make a convincing effort to keep most people away if they plan on trespassing in your absence. If you want to, you can also use the Blueprints feature to create Skills for your smart speaker with your own custom conversations. User-created Skills can be shared on Amazon’s Skills Page and are available for download free of cost.

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