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

Posted by BeauHD on from the cease-and-desist dept.

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.

56 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. One weird trick to stop Amazon from spying on you: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Take a sledgehammer.
    2. Smash that fucking surveillance device.
    3. Stop buying or using any surveillance devices in the future.

  2. Step 0 by OzPeter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Step 0. Don't buy an Alexa and you won't have this problem.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    1. Re:Step 0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Great idea. Now, how can I stop Facebook from recording everything I upload to them into their database?

    2. Re:Step 0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you DO buy an Alexa, you will have to check these settings after every software update. That is exactly the kind of thing that accidentally gets flipped by the software updates whenever the company pushes them out.

    3. Re:Step 0 by x_t0ken_407 · · Score: 1

      Came here to post this but looks like many of my Slashdot brethren have already stated the obvious, heh.

    4. Re:Step 0 by anetk · · Score: 1

      I have an Amazon Fire tablet and it came with Alexa, but I don't use Alexa and have it disabled and it still uses 80% battery.... I do block a lot of amazon domain names use pi-hole and the tablet tries to communicate with Amazon about every minute.

    5. Re:Step 0 by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.)

    6. Re:Step 0 by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Step 0.1: If you really, really insist you can't live without this Alexa piece of shit, unplug the gods-be-damned thing when you're not using it.

    7. Re: Step 0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Accidentally on purpose

    8. Re:Step 0 by scdeimos · · Score: 1

      "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.

      You can, but you may not like the consequences.

    9. Re:Step 0 by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      You can't. You agreed to it when you signed up to their service.

      Of course, you can delete all your existing content (don't worry, they'll keep copies), disconnect from all your "friends" (if they don't know you well enough to complain the next time they see you, are they really friends?), delete all your posts which mention any locations, companies or products. Then log off and don't come back. That'll stop them from recording anything new into their database, but they'll still know of your existence.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    10. Re:Step 0 by middlebass · · Score: 1

      There are people who don't like the idea of Alexa and those who do. For the first category, the "Don't own one" response is natural. For the second category, your response is natural. As for me, I have a natural bias because I have a voice problem. Not a bad one, but people often have to ask me to repeat something. Alexa would be somewhere between useless and extremely aggravating for me. One of my sons and his wife and kids love Alexa, and the other son and his wife hate it, so I don't know whether my granddaughter would like it or not.

  3. Easy! by spaceyhackerlady · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Easy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      So I take it you leave your cellphone outside

    2. Re:Easy! by rogoshen1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sadly it's going to get harder and harder to avoid this kind of shit.

      As long as corps view any bit of data they don't hoover up and sell as "Money left on the table" the encroachment will continue.

      The big one will be cars. Dear god, help us.

    3. Re:Easy! by Paul+Neubauer · · Score: 1

      "I know you're listening. They SHOOT spies, don't they?"

      --
      I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
    4. Re:Easy! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 1

      The big one will be cars.

      Will be?

      Whoever thought it was a good idea to take some of the most complex electronic hardware and software systems we've ever invented, which have typically used architecture designed for a closed system where trust isn't normally an issue, and connect it to arbitrary external systems with little if any thought for the security, privacy and reliability implications, really should be banned from ever doing anything with technology again for the good of us all.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    5. Re:Easy! by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Especially if manufacturers keep insisting you can turn these features off.

      It never ceases to amaze me how even geeks insist there's nothing to worry about because you can disable telemetry. Then they're surprised, after some kind of hack exposé, that the option was never honored by the company. Shocker!

    6. Re:Easy! by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      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.

      Especially if one has a daughter named Alexa -- which someone I know does *and* has an Alexa enabled device.
      The device apparently responds when she calls (yells) for her daughter.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    7. Re:Easy! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Don't buy cars with microphones and cameras on the inside. If for some gods-be-damned reason the car won't function without them (why the hell wouldn't it?) then don't buy that model car.
      Additionally: don't want to be tracked everywhere via GPS? Easy enough to locate a GPS antenna, cut the wire, and cap the receiver end of the cable with a 50-ohm resistor, so it doesn't come off as a 'fault' that makes some idiot light turn on.

    8. Re:Easy! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Transceiver antennas can be disconnected and the cables shunted into a dummy load. End of 'external connectivity' problem.

    9. Re:Easy! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Unplug it from power. Now you're sure it's off.

    10. Re:Easy! by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      and cap the receiver end of the cable with a 50-ohm resistor,

      At the frequencies used by GPS systems, a 50 ohm resistor will likely not appear as a 50 ohm impedance. A 50 ohm GPS antenna will also likely not appear like a 50 ohm resistor at DC. In fact, if the antenna is active (internal amplifier powered by DC on the antenna cable) the receiver can easily determine a fault when the antenna is replaced by a 50 ohm resistor. Even just a simple crossed-loop GPS antenna will have close to 0 ohms impedance at DC, and the receiver can easily detect the difference.

    11. Re:Easy! by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      The big one will be cars. Dear god, help us.

      Yes, God help us.
      By the end of this century, human society will be something like THX 1138.
      Maybe sooner.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    12. Re:Easy! by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 1

      It never ceases to amaze me how even geeks insist there's nothing to worry about because you can disable telemetry.

      Geeks are smart, and they usually understand the pervasiveness of these technologies.

      When geeks insist there is nothing to worry about, it is usually because they have some kind of vested interest in the technology being accepted.
      Just look at the softball puff pieces that have been put out in the last 15 years about things like Facebook or smartphones or Alexa.

      No, a lot of geeks just want their money, and they don't care about you or your privacy concerns.

      --
      We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
    13. Re:Easy! by hawk · · Score: 1

      said William Barr to the plant by his desk . . . :)

      hawk

    14. Re:Easy! by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      Obfuscant is probably right about shorting the antenna.

      As long as the vehicle is one which has non-GPS models, then the antenna is likely in a corner of the windscreen (whatever Americans call it). Just glue tin foil on the outside of the windscreen where that sits, then do the same on the inside of the screen. When you switch on, and the GPS can't pick up any satellites ... problem solved. And if you're conservative about your choice of glue, you can return this system to "store condition" before you sell the rusty hulk.

      If your car tries to use WiFi connections to map location in town, repeat with it's antenna.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  4. Don't buy a listening device for your home? by gweihir · · Score: 2

    I mean, how obvious does it have to get?

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:Don't buy a listening device for your home? by imidan · · Score: 1

      Christ almighty, it's like volunteering to be surveilled by the goddamn Stasi! Amazon, the on-line bookstore from the 90s, is distributing listening devices that they have somehow convinced people to purchase for themselves, and is employing a spatially-distributed sweatshop of thousands of people who sit for nine hours a day and listen in on other people's private conversations, transcribe them, and file them away. This dystopian horror goes beyond Orwell's nightmares, and the whole point of it is to sell people more shit. It's goddamn madness!

    2. Re:Don't buy a listening device for your home? by drewlake2000 · · Score: 1

      If you think it's beyond an Orwellian nightmare, you may want to read 1984, or Animal Farm. It's a bit more surveillance than Road to Wigan Pier I grant you.

    3. Re:Don't buy a listening device for your home? by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Oh, decidedly not Orwellian yet. But the direction and the eventual use of this data is clear, even if it still will take a while. The economy going to hell in a totalitarian state is also clear. This universally happens, unless there is a lot of riches to sell, e.g. as the Saudis have. But look at Venezuela, which has a lot of oil too and people now have trouble getting enough to eat. Also, what happens to the Saudis when the oil runs out or becomes worthless is also pretty clear. They do not produce anything, they just sell a finite resource that is already there.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  5. Re:One weird trick to stop Amazon from spying on y by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Where's the "X. Profit!" step? You're fired!

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  6. Re:Are you sure ? by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    It still needs to communicate with their servers just to work. So somewhere, some Amazon employee with system administrator access is always going to have the ability to access this info, even if they're forbidden from doing so by the terms of their employment.

  7. Shorter version by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    1. Unplug Alexa
    2. Take a hammer to the electronics
    3. Melt it in a fire of a thousand suns
    4. Toss in the rubbish bin

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  8. This better get a hundred "don't buy it" comments. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How daft does one have to be to think a config option is an acceptable fix?

  9. I talked my sister-in-law into returning hers by stevegee58 · · Score: 2

    Told her it was nothing but a potential snooping device of little marginal value.

    1. Re:I talked my sister-in-law into returning hers by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      The value of the device is to Amazon, not the user. That is why they are giving them away.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  10. Re:Are you sure ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    it's not just 'some amazon employee', but many such workers, in addition to others who are employed by contractors.. perhaps not even in your own country or region, that has full access to (literally) everything amazon stores.

  11. One other question... by LVSlushdat · · Score: 1

    IF you have one of these devices in your home/office, DO YOU TRUST Amazon to actually honor these settings? I certainly don't, and won't have one of these (or ANY of the other versions by other manufacturers) devices in my home.

    --
    THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
  12. Recordings will be safe and sound ?? by Kekke · · Score: 1

    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.

    Says Who ?
    20 years old low tech "wannabee" @ Tom's Hardware, or wait! Amazon maybe ?

    please oh please

    1. Re: Recordings will be safe and sound ?? by nullchar · · Score: 1

      Hah, that line was the trigger to enter the comments section.

  13. Re:Step 0: Become a person! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    Then they're dumb and they'll get what they deserve.
    By the way what happens when 'some stranger' is a pedophile who managed to hack into things and is listening to your kids? What then?
    Or how about if it's criminals who want to listen for when you're not home, so they can rob you blind?
    Or how about if it's some shitty government agency that thinks it should have the right to listen in on whatever they choose, and have machines sift it for trigger words? You find you're on the no-fly list for no valid reason, and are being investigated for sedition, or terrorism, or child porn, or whatever, because of something out-of-context your so-called 'voice assistant' happened to record. What then?
    There's any number of reasons why your personal privacy in your own home should be sacred, and if someone ignores that then they're dumb.

  14. Re:Are you sure ? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Geez, how dumb are some of you? Unplug it from power! Now it's OFF! There was that so damned hard?

  15. Re: One weird trick to stop Amazon from spying on by nullchar · · Score: 1

    That *is* how you profit. By not letting others profit off you.

    (Can insert requisite "..." step if you wish.)

  16. Break through idea! by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    Don't put a microphone, that sends all the recordings to another person / company, in your house. NO ONE who owns a Alexa, Google Home, or any other "smart" speaker, can complain about the way their data is handled or used. The moment you put a smart speaking in your house, you swore off any data privacy that you might of had available.

  17. Re:One weird trick to stop Amazon from spying on y by antdude · · Score: 1

    Same for smartphones?

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  18. Re:Step 0: Become a person! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Not everybody is tunnel-visioned focused on worrying whether there are cars coming, they're going to cross the road and no car is going to stop them, dammit!

    Seriously, if you don't value security, then don't be surprised or complain when someone owns you or your money.

  19. Don't let the camel into the tent. by biggaijin · · Score: 1

    The best way to prevent Amazon from spying on you is never to buy one of these infernal devices and never to put one of them into your house. If you do otherwise, you are begging them to listen in. Trust me: No matter what they say, no matter what the law demands, they will listen in. Remove the temptation. It may mean that you have to get out of your chair to turn the lights on and off, but I see this as a small price to pay for privacy.

  20. Wishful thinking by aglider · · Score: 1

    So a software toggle will prevent that eavesdropping?
    You insensitive wishful food.
    Even if you did accurate traffic analysis you could not be able to know whether your recordings are being sent out.

    The solution? Stop immediately using these useless voice operated (so called) assistants!

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
  21. Amazon Audible geostalks even with GPS off by fluke11 · · Score: 2
    Amazon Audible says that it provides as part of it's conditions of use/policies the Amazon Privacy Notice. Then in that document they the mobile app may use the user's location but that "most mobile devices provide users with the ability to disable location services." This privacy policy is misleading because the instructions (and instructions from Android device manufacturers) is to turn the GPS service off.

    Even with the GPS turned off Audible still sends the network router MAC address and SSID to kochava.com which is resolved to the user's location. Kochava admits to using their "IdentityLink" tracking in the Audible app. Kochava also promotes the fact their reports include geolocation.

    It should also be noted that users of Audible are locked into using this app on Android because the content is provided in an obfuscated format. So not only does the advice of the privacy policy to turn off location services not work, using alternatives apps are also not a supported option under Audible's terms of use.

    I have tried a couple times to get in touch with Audible/Amazon support. They refused to admit to the use of Kochava embedded in Audible or that any location tracking was continuing to take place. It was implied that the activity of Audible must be due to a different app installed. And while they claimed an Audible developer would get in touch with me, it has been several months with no follow-up.

    Overall, I get the feeling that customer privacy really is not a priority for Amazon and being misleading about the lack of privacy they provide is just part of the business model.

  22. Alexia??? by havana9 · · Score: 1

    They are currently selling Alexia CDs. Why they have to listen to mine?

  23. Re:One weird trick to stop Amazon from spying on y by Highdude702 · · Score: 2

    My step 1 involved never buying a stupid listening device and then wondering why a company is spying on me. IJS

  24. Re:Step 0: Become a person! by currently_awake · · Score: 2

    You think the NSA built all those massive server farms to record meta-data? They could do that with a single blade server. They are recording everything. Can't actually analyze it, not enough people. But rest assured, within hours of the next 9/11 attack they will have all the pieces of who the suicide bombers were and where they used to live and work.

  25. Re:Step 0: Become a person! by drewlake2000 · · Score: 1

    Totally unoriginal thoughts, and lack of individuality. This post tediously parroting. It's like the flat earthers saying "do the research", the crowds in life of Bryan chanting "we are all individuals" and hundreds of thousands of levellers fans singing "there's only one way of life and that's your own".

  26. microphone switch, raspberry pi? by Doke · · Score: 1
    The only way I would consider having an Alexa device is if it had a hard switch on the microphones, ie "press to talk". I don't know of any such device, so I would have to rewire an existing device. In the normal Alexa devices, the microphones (7 of them!) are tiny, surface mount, hard to get at, and hard to rewire.

    https://www.ifixit.com/Teardow...

    Another option would be to build my own, with a switch. I found instructions on installing Alexa on a Raspberry Pi. It sounds like it does all the control stuff, but doesn't do the DRM audio. So I couldn't use it to play Pandora or Spotify.

    https://pimylifeup.com/raspber...

  27. Re:Step 0: Become a person! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    If you wasted mod points to call me a 'troll' then you're just angry because I called you out for the dum-dum you are. Enjoy your NO PRIVACY. Idiots.