Last Updated: November 2019
Amazon does a great job of giving you control over what level of privacy you want. Here are the 5 pro tips every Alexa user should know so you can decide what privacy settings are right for you.
Everything you need to know about your Alexa privacy
Top 5 Alexa Privacy Tips:
#1. Amazon makes it easy to delete recordings of your Alexa voice commands
Wondering why Alexa needs to record you at all? In order to process what you have asked for when you say “Alexa, what’s the weather?” and give you a helpful response, Alexa needs to send what you said to the Amazon cloud. That’s where the actual analysis — taking your voice recording’s sound waves and figuring out a response — happens.
Amazon then adds those recordings to your voice history in order to help give you a more personalized Alexa experience in the future. But, if you don’t want those recordings to be stored in your voice history, you can easily delete them. Read on to learn how.
How to delete recordings from today with Alexa commands
To delete recordings of everything you said to Alexa today: “Alexa, delete everything I said today”
To delete the Alexa command you just said: “Alexa, delete what I just said”
You need to enable deletion by voice in the Alexa app for these 2 commands to work. Here’s how:
- Open the Alexa app
- Tap the hamburger icon
- Tap Settings
- Tap Alexa Privacy
- Tap Review Voice History
- Toggle on Enable deletion by voice at the top
How to automatically delete your Alexa recordings that are 3+ or 18+ months old (NEW Privacy Feature!)
You can now choose to have recordings of your interactions with Alexa that are 3+ or 18+ months old automatically deleted on an ongoing basis. With this fantastic privacy feature, you can rest assured that your old voice recordings won’t be stored.
To start having Alexa automatically delete your recordings, follow these steps:
- Open the Alexa app
- Tap the hamburger icon in upper left corner
- Tap Settings
- Tap Alexa Privacy
- Tap “Manage Your Alexa Data”
- Tap “Automatically delete recordings,” make your selection and tap the “Confirm” button
I decided to auto-delete my recordings that are 18+ months old. My hope is this will improve my privacy while not significantly degrading Alexa’s ability to provide a personalized experience.
How to delete everything else
You can also permanently delete your entire history of Alexa voice recordings — or just a few specific ones — in 30 seconds or less. Follow these easy steps:
- Open the Alexa app
- Tap the hamburger icon in upper left corner
- Tap Settings
- Tap Alexa Privacy
- Tap Review Voice History
- Select date range from drop-down menu (can be today, all history or any range in between)
- You can tap Delete All Recordings for Your Selected Date Range or check off specific recordings and tap Delete Selected Recordings
Pro Tip
If you are using Alexa voice commands to delete Alexa voice recordings, you can easily see with your own eyes that they were deleted (I did this the first time I used this feature to see if it really worked). Just follow the steps below:
- Follow steps 1 – 4 above
- Tap Review Voice History and confirm the voice recording is not there
#2. You can also delete stored information about usage of your smart home devices
Alexa receives information about how you use third party smart home devices. Like when you turn your lights on and off and what temperature you set your thermostat to.
How?
To delete this information, follow the steps below:
- Follow steps 1 – 4 in #1 above
- Tap Manage Smart Home Devices History
- Tap the Delete Smart Home Devices History button
#3. You can make sure only essential skills can access your information
When you use certain skills, you may give them information about where you live or your cell phone number. While you might want the Big Sky and Uber skills to know your address, you may have given access to another skill that you don’t use anymore.
Amazon has a user-friendly portal where you can easily see and change what skills have access to what information about you.
How?
Follow the steps below:
- Follow steps 1 – 4 in #1 above
- Tap Manage Skill Permissions
- Tap into different information types (Use Amazon Pay, Full Name, Mobile Number, etc.) to see what skills have access
- To remove access, change the toggle to the right of the skill name to the off setting
#4. You can choose to opt out of letting Amazon use your data to improve Alexa and having any human review your Alexa recordings (NEW privacy control)
By default, Amazon will use your voice recordings to help develop new features and improve transcription accuracy. You can easily opt out (although, according to Amazon, new features may not work as well for you).
Here’s what’s new: If you opt out, you’re also guaranteeing that no human will review your Alexa recordings to improve transcription accuracy.
How?
To opt out, follow the steps below:
- Follow steps 1 – 4 in #1 above
- Tap Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa
- Set the toggles to the off setting
#5. You can easily mute or unplug your Alexa device
Even if you love and rely on your Alexa device under most circumstances, muting or unplugging is always an option.
How?
- To mute an Echo, tap the microphone button the top of the speaker (a red ring will indicate it’s muted)
- You can also easily disable the camera on an Echo Show by either manually closing the camera shutter or accessing the device’s settings menu
- Unplugging an Echo is self-explanatory. What you might not know is that when you plug it back in, it will just work. No need to re-connect your account, wifi, etc.
Do I need to take these steps?
It’s a personal decision. There’s generally a trade-off between increased levels of privacy and user experience, and with Alexa it’s no different.
Regardless of what you decide, Amazon does a great job of giving you control over what level of privacy you want.
So I really don’t need to worry that Alexa is always recording me?
No, you don’t. Here are the key points that make me comfortable with having Alexa in my home from a privacy standpoint:
#1. Alexa only records after she hears “Alexa”
A lot of people wonder to themselves is Alexa listening to me all the time? One of the magical things about Alexa devices is that they are always listening. That means you don’t have to walk over to to your Echo to press a button to prompt Alexa to do something.
But it’s important to make the distinction between always listening and always recording. Alexa only starts recording after she hears her wake word “Alexa” (or whatever you have changed it to if you use a custom Alexa wake word). She needs to record what you’re asking her in order to send it up to Amazon’s cloud to process your request and give you a response.
#2. You’ll always know when Alexa is recording because the blue ring on your Echo will light up
As soon as Alexa hears the wake word and starts recording, the blue ring on your Echo lights up. Alexa was designed to always show you when she is recording.
What if you inadvertently wake Alexa up (this happens all the time) and don’t notice the blue ring? Chances are that at some point she’ll give a response and pipe in with some irrelevant piece of information. So you’ll know that she was recording and processing what you were just saying (and you can always delete it).
Pro Tip
If Alexa ever wakes up and you don’t understand why, you can now just say “Alexa, tell me what you heard” to find out what caused her to wake up. You can also say “Alexa, delete what I just said” if you’d like.
Another cool privacy feature coming soon is the ability to say “Alexa, why did you do that?” Amazon is rolling this out to help users understand what Alexa is doing when she acts in unexpected ways.
#3. The few reported Alexa privacy failures have come from one-off, highly improbable events
You may have seen this one from December or this one from last May. The December incident was a case of random human error on the part of an Amazon employee, while May’s incident resulted from a highly improbable series of events that seriously confused Alexa.
See Also
8 Alexa Settings That Will Seriously Upgrade Your Alexa Experience