Worried About Alexa Listening All The Time? You’re Not That Interesting!

Alexa & Your Privacy

Privacy. Every time I’m a guest on a podcast talking about Alexa, I’m always asked THAT question…”but what about Alexa recording everything you say?”

Since the 20th century, technology has always offered some form of trade-off of convenience vs. privacy, and Alexa is no different. But there’s not enough computing power in the world for Alexa to be constantly monitoring everything you say. Not only that, 99% of it would be irrelevant, making it a very inefficient system to learn more about you.

But, I believe everyone should be in charge of his or her own privacy, so here’s how to take control of it away from Alexa and find out what’s she’s recorded. You can even delete it from Amazon’s servers, if you want to.

Important Note: Amazon keeps the voice recordings associated with your account to improve the accuracy of Alexa’s results and to improve the service. If you delete all recordings, your Alexa might be a little stupider than mine.

To listen to your dialog history in the Alexa app:

• Go to the menu and select “Settings.”
• Select your Alexa Account and then select “History.”
• Select an interaction from the list, and then click the “Play” icon.
• To delete individual recordings, select “Delete voice recordings.”

To delete all of your recordings on Alexa:

• Go to “Manage Your Content and Devices” on the Amazon website.
• Select the “Your Devices” tab.
• From the list of devices registered to your Amazon account, select your Alexa device.
• Select “Manage voice recordings.”
• Select “Delete.”