Echo Show

When Amazon first introduced Alexa, it was expected to be a game-changer for smart home interactions. However, the reality has been somewhat disappointing, with Amazon's smart home ecosystem being heavily locked down and limited in its capabilities compared to alternatives like Home Assistant.

The Problem with Echo Devices

One of the major issues with Echo devices is the increasing number of adverts on the smart displays, which has become annoying over the years. To address this, some users have resorted to jailbreaking their older Echo Show devices and using them as dedicated dashboards for Home Assistant instead.

Monitoring Echo Device Activity

To understand what Echo devices are doing when not in use, a network-wide DNS sinkhole like Pi-hole can be used. This tool acts as a DNS server for the home network and can block ads and trackers at source, while also providing insights into DNS requests from devices on the network.

Investigating DNS Requests

By monitoring a single Echo Show 5 device for a couple of hours, it was possible to see the frequency and nature of DNS requests. The results showed that the device was contacting Amazon's services regularly, even when not in use.

141 DNS requests to the media and content delivery service domain
68 requests to Amazon's content delivery network
58 calls to the main Alexa API
Requests to a domain used for backend communication between Echo devices and Amazon's services

Conclusion

The findings highlight the need for users to be aware of what their smart devices are doing when not in use. By using tools like Pi-hole, users can gain insights into the activity of their devices and make informed decisions about their smart home setup.

Future of Smart Home Devices

Technology teams are watching echo show closely because changes in this space often arrive faster than internal policies can adapt.

For product and engineering leaders, the practical question is how this could reshape roadmaps, vendor choices, and security reviews over the next few quarters.

Organizations that document lessons early tend to respond more calmly when similar patterns appear again.

In many companies, the first impact shows up in planning meetings: teams reassess priorities, revisit risk registers, and check whether existing tooling still fits.

Smaller businesses feel these shifts too. A single platform change or market move can affect customer trust, delivery timelines, and hiring plans.

The most resilient teams treat stories like this as input for quarterly reviews rather than one-day headlines.

If your business depends on modern software, ERP, VoIP, or customer-facing apps, staying informed helps you separate noise from decisions that require action.

Looking ahead, disciplined follow-through matters: assign owners, set review dates, and measure whether your response improved outcomes.

Security and compliance stakeholders should ask whether current controls still match the pace of change described in this update.

Operations leaders can reduce friction by translating the headline into a short internal brief with clear next steps for each department.

Customer support teams may see early signals through tickets, outages, or policy questions long before leadership reviews are scheduled.

Finance and procurement groups should note whether licensing, vendor risk, or implementation costs need revisiting after this development.

Training programs benefit from timely updates so staff understand what changed, what did not change, and what requires escalation.

Architecture reviews are a practical place to test assumptions, especially when new tools, platforms, or threats enter the conversation.

Documentation quality often determines how quickly a company recovers from surprises; capture decisions while context is still clear.