Amazon’s artificial intelligence-powered home assistant Amazon Echo records every voice command you give to it. Here’s how you can listen to and delete everything your device has recorded.
“Is Amazon Echo always listening? The short answer is yes,” declared Fox News Tech. “I’m guessing most people don’t know this, but — surprise! — you can listen to every command you’ve ever given your Echo with the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet.”
“When I did, I was surprised to learn that some of my recordings had nothing to do with commands,” Fox News’ Kim Komando reported, explaining that “There I was talking on my phone about the old studios I was selling. Alexa also recorded portions of a presidential debate. I am not sure why my real estate call was recorded, but one of the candidates almost said the word ‘Alexa.'”
So how do you find and delete Amazon Echo’s recordings?
If you’d like to review your old recordings, open the Alexa app, tap on the Settings menu and then tap on History. Given the hundreds or thousands of commands most Echo users accumulate, you’ll find a huge catalog of your requests. Select the recording you’d like to review and tap the Play icon to listen to it.
If it creeps you out that your requests and other things you may have said have been stored in a database, you can delete them. Here’s how:
* Open the Alexa app and go into Settings.
* Select History and you’ll see a list of all the entries.
* Select an entry and tap the Delete button.
But what if you want to delete all your recordings? Do you have to remove each one manually? That could take days!
Amazon lets you remove everything with one click. Just visit the “Manage Your Content and Devices” at www.amazon.com/mycd. But keep in mind Amazon’s warning that “deleting voice recordings may degrade your Alexa experience.”
Fox News Tech also explain in their article how you can stop Amazon Echo from listening to you altogether.
Last month, a video of Amazon Echo turning off upon being asked about its ties to the C.I.A. went viral, prompting Breitbart Tech’s Lucas Nolan to test it himself.
“We asked the same questions that the woman in the original video asked, using a similar Echo Dot device to test the original video’s validity,” reported Nolan in March, however it appeared the device had been updated, if the video was ever valid at all. “Upon being asked, ‘Alexa, are you connected to the CIA?’ the device did not shut down as seen in the original video. Instead, it responded, ‘No, I work for Amazon.’
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.
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