The very nature of Amazon’s Alexa interactive device requires that it pay attention to what you’re talking about — just in case. That makes my skin crawl so I avoid it. Nonetheless, there are many who love it but would like to have a little more control over what Alexa remembers and saves. This article will help you.
Amazon Alexa is recording our conversations – how you can listen to and delete them
This is because Alexa works on ‘wake words’ which means sometimes it can pick up false ones when you’re not interacting with it and start recording
By Jessica Sansome James Rodger Head of Trends
- 07:52, 20 FEB 2020
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Alexa is recording your conversations – here’s how you can listen back to them and delete them.
Amazon’s Alexa devices are actually recording us – even if we are not actively speaking to it.
The concerns have been confirmed by an Amazon insider.
Manchester Evening News reports an ex-Amazon exec told BBC’s Panorama special, Amazon: What They Know About Us, that he turns off Amazon’s Alexa “whenever [he] wants to have a private moment.”
This is because Alexa works on ‘wake words’ which means sometimes it can pick up false ones when you’re not interacting with it and start recording.
However, it’s not always full conversations, it could just be little sound bites.
But there is a reason they take these recordings, even if it is without you knowing.
An Amazon spokesperson has previously said: “To help improve Alexa, we manually review and annotate a small fraction of one per cent of Alexa requests.
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“Access to data annotation tools is only granted to a limited number of employees who require them to improve the service, and our annotation process does not associate voice recordings with any customer identifiable information.
“Customers can opt-out of having their voice recordings included in the fraction of one percent of voice recordings that get reviewed.”
How to find the conversations and delete them:
- Open the Alexa app
- Go to the Settings menu
- Select Settings
- Select Alexa Privacy, and then select an entry or review a specific date range
- Tap the text you want to hear, and then click the Play icon
- If you want to delete a recording, simply tick the empty box next to it, and tap ‘Delete Selected Recordings’
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