Alexa is the virtual assistant of our dreams. As far as her capabilities, she can do so much through Alexa-enabled devices like the Echo, from organizing your schedule to ordering your groceries to maintaining your smart home to playing music to obeying your voice commands.
In fact, she's so popular, she's recognizable simply by her first name — like Madonna.
But she has a character flaw. Alexa listens and records your conversations to Amazon's cloud. And by Alexa, we mean Amazon employees can actually listen to the private conversations happening in your home when Alexa is enabled, and unless you opt out of the intrusive function, it's going to keep happening.
How to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings
- Open the Alexa app.
- Tap More in the bottom right corner of your screen.
- Tap Settings.
- Scroll down and select Alexa Privacy.
- Tap Manage Your Alexa Data.
- From there, you can enable or disable detection by voice, which allows you to delete recordings by saying "Alexa, delete everything I said today." You can also choose how long to save recordings — for 3 months, 18 months, until you delete them, or you can choose not to save recordings at all. If you opt to not saving any recordings, all of your previously recordings will be deleted.
If you decide not to save recordings, Alexa warns that her ability to understand and respond may degrade. The change could take up to 36 hours.