RECORDINGS from your Alexa speaker may be listened to by Amazon workers – unless your change your settings.
We reveal the three changes you need to make right now to make sure strangers can’t listen in.
Just this week, an ex-Amazon exec admitted that he turns his Alexa off to stop strangers listening in on his conversations.
That’s because Amazon was sometimes sending your voice clips off to “graders”.
These workers will listen to clips to make sure Alexa is working as intended – improving the system all round.
However, Alexa will sometimes record you without your knowledge, because she thought you said her name.
Here’s what you need to do…
It’s possible to opt out of human grading.
This means Amazon workers will never be sent any of your voice recordings.
But Amazon warns: “Training Alexa with recordings from a diverse range of customers helps ensure Alexa works well for everyone.
“Only an extremely small fraction of voice recordings is manually reviewed.
“If you turn this off, voice recognition and new features may not work well for you.”
To switch this off, open the Alexa app, go into the menu and find Settings.
Go into Alexa Privacy and choose Manage Your Alexa Data.
You’ll find the option to opt out of sharing voice recordings halfway down the page, under the Help Improve Alexa heading.
First, open the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet.
Tap into the menu bar on the left-hand side and then tap Settings.
Next tap Alexa Privacy, and then go into Review Voice History.
To delete audio recordings, individually tap on the empty boxes next to each recording to “tick” them.
Then go to the top of the list and press “Delete Selected Recordings” to delete those individual files.
You can also select a date range like “Today”, “This Week” or “All History” and then press “Delete All Recordings” for that date range.
If you just want to delete recordings for a specific speaker, you can tap Filter By Device and choose the exact Alexa gadget you’re looking for.
You can also enable deletion by voice on this page.
If you toggle it on, you can delete recordings using voice commands.
Just say either “Alexa, delete what I just said” or “Alexa, delete everything I said today”.
You can also set your Alexa up to automatically delete recordings.
The two alternative options include keeping recordings for 3 months, or for 18 months.
Any older recordings will be deleted automatically.
To change this, open the Alexa app then tap into the menu bar.
Find Settings then choose Alexa Privacy, and then tap Manage Your Alexa Data.
You’ll find the option to automatically delete recordings at the top.
Toggle Off to On and choose how long you’d like to keep recordings before they’re scrubbed from Amazon’s records.
In other news, we reveal the best Alexa tips and tricks.
A terrified mum says her Amazon Echo speaker urged her to kill herself.
And Amazon recently launched an Alexa ring and a smart oven.
Do you trust Amazon to protect your privacy? Let us know in the comments!
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