How To Stop Amazon From Listening To Your Alexa Recordings (tomsguide.com)

Yesterday, Bloomberg dropped a bombshell report revealing that Amazon employs thousands of people around the world to listen to voice recordings captured in Echo owners' homes and offices, and uses them to improve its Alexa digital assistant. "The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa's understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands," the report says. "A screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the recordings sent to the Alexa auditors don't provide a user's full name and address but are associated with an account number, as well as the user's first name and the device's serial number."

While many have assumed that this was already happening behind the scenes, it may still come as a surprise to see proof of the practice. Thankfully, there is a way to stop Amazon from listening to your Alexa recordings. Tom's Guide explains: 1. In the Alexa app, access Settings. You'll find this button at the bottom of the menu in the top left corner of the home screen.
2. Click on Alexa Account. This should be at the top of the page.
3. Select Alexa Privacy. You'll be taken to Amazon's external Alexa privacy page. You can review a number of things here, including our voice history, skill permissions, and other data settings.
4. Tap "Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa."
5. Toggle "Help Develop New Features" and "Use Messages to Improve Transcriptions" to Off. Alexa will no longer learn and improve from your responses, but your recordings will be safe and sound.

Comments

Easy!

[spaceyhackerlady]

Don't use Alexa.

I flatly refuse to have a device in my home that is connected to the internet and that, by design, monitors the sound around it. No f**king way.

...laura

Re:Step 0

[Obfuscant]

You bought an Amazon-branded device intended to deal with Amazon content and you are surprised that it tries to communicate with Amazon on a regular basis? This is how it checks for new content, for one thing. That's the same reason why the Nook app starts services that check with B&N every so often. It's functionality that most people want, because most people want to know when new content is available without having to run the app every hour or day or even week. It's why good email clients have a poll option, too.

It's a shame that people here are so devoid of context that they think the correct answer to the question is to not have an Alexa device at all. That's the OBVIOUS answer, which means maybe they aren't getting the actual question. The actual question is not "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings", it is "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings without losing the functionality that the user paid for."

Would we like a car analogy? Answering the question "how do I keep my car from pulling to the left when I apply the brakes" with "don't apply the brakes", "don't drive that car", or "don't own a car" is ridiculous. The correct answer is "have your brake system checked". It should be obvious that the person asking such a question doesn't want to lose the functionality of having and using a car, but wants to know how to solve a specific problem while using it.

Of course, we now have more than 50% of the responses parroting the "don't own one" or similar variants, which is useless in context. The most useless ones are those whose answers apply to devices that have already been bought and paid for, as if giving Amazon the money in exchange for no service was ok. "Buy one, hit it with a sledgehammer". (Of course the "buy one" part is implicit, since you can't do the latter without the former.)