This Living Room Device Is Recording Everything You Say—And You No Longer Have a Choice About It
Admit it: You’ve always wondered whether Amazon’s Alexa spies on you. You may have even gotten a little paranoid about it at one point, especially since privacy experts have cautioned that smart devices are always listening. But you likely got over your fears because it’s just so darn convenient to have a handy virtual assistant dishing out all sorts of information you need quickly and efficiently.
Now, Amazon’s recent announcement about a change in the way it processes information for Alexa devices may have you worrying all over again. Starting on March 28, Amazon will no longer offer the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” feature on Echo devices, moving all of your voice recordings to its cloud server, whether you like it or not.
How big of a deal is this? And will Amazon be listening to everything you say—and keeping that information indefinitely? Read on to find out the details and see if there’s anything you can do about it.
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What does this Alexa announcement mean, exactly?
“Basically, Amazon is ending its feature for selected devices, where you could choose not to send a voice recording to the cloud—but it had always sent a text transcript of your question or command,” explains Carolina Milanesi, president and principal analyst at Creative Strategies, a Silicon Valley–based market research firm. “So what’s happening now is that voice recordings will go to the cloud now [even if you previously asked for them not to].”
So while written transcripts were going to Amazon’s cloud regardless of the option you’d chosen, this new announcement means your voice recordings will now go there too. If it’s any consolation, Milanesi says the audio upload is encrypted, which means the data is electronically secured against unauthorized access.
Will Amazon keep these voice recordings indefinitely?
Yes, unless you manually choose to delete them off the Amazon cloud via the Alexa Privacy dashboard. (More on that below.)
That said, for customers who had previously turned on the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” feature, Amazon will automatically enable another feature called “Don’t Save Recordings” on March 28. With this enabled, those users’ voice recordings will be automatically deleted after Alexa processes a customer’s request; any previously saved voice recordings will also be deleted.
And as noted above, if this sounds like a better option for you, you can enable that “Don’t Save Recordings” feature now. “The opportunity to review voice recordings is an important privacy control that provides transparency,” Lauren Raemhild, an Amazon spokesperson, tells Reader’s Digest. “We understand not all customers will choose the same settings—and different settings have different trade-offs—so we want to be able to give customers choice when it comes to managing not only their voice recordings but their broader Alexa experience.”
Can you turn off this feature?
No. Those who don’t want their audio-based requests uploaded to Amazon’s cloud should not use an Alexa-enabled device.
Or if you’re comfortable as long as voice recordings aren’t saved after the request is processed, then you might be OK to continue using your Alexa device. To do this, go to the Alexa Privacy dashboard in the Alexa app or online. There, you’ll find several options to manage recordings, including the option to not have voice recordings saved at all and the ability to automatically delete recordings on an ongoing three- or 18-month basis. Customers can also delete their recordings by voice (e.g., “Alexa, delete what I just said”) or delete their recordings one by one, by date range, by profile or by device in the Alexa app or online.
The default setting, however, is that all your voice recordings will be sent to the Amazon cloud and stored there until you choose to remove them—unless you previously opted out. In that instance, your voice recordings will be automatically deleted after being processed.
Does this mean that Amazon is officially spying on you?
No. Spying is not an accurate word here. It’s more accurate to say that Alexa is always listening for its wake word, rather than constantly recording what is said near the speaker. That said, sometimes Alexa mishears a word as a wake word and wakes up—and records—when it shouldn’t. You may have heard some examples of that on the news, such as one 2018 incident when an Alexa device somehow recorded a married couple’s private conversation and then sent it via message to the husband’s co-worker. And, of course, there are other concerns about privacy, from the future use of biometrics to deepfakes to your data being out there, somewhere.
But Milanesi isn’t all that concerned. “The information you share in the [Alexa] prompt is still sent to the cloud for processing in the form of a transcript today, so from a privacy perspective you are still sharing info,” she explains. And even though Amazon’s cloud is encrypted, she adds, “if voice prompts fell into the wrong hands, I am sure they could be used to train AI deepfakes and such, but so could every single video you post on social media. So I am not sure why the actual voice recordings going to the cloud are worrying people so much.”
How many people will this affect?
Believe it or not, not as many as you probably think. According to Amazon, fewer than 0.03% of customers enabled the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” option. (So if that’s news to you, you may want to pay more attention to your privacy settings in the future!)
This option wasn’t available on all devices either. The soon-to-be-discontinued “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” feature was an opt-in choice by users on Echo Dot (4th Gen), Echo Show 10 and Echo Show 15. It was also only available to customers in the U.S. with devices set to English.
Customers who did not enable the “Do Not Save Voice Recordings” feature will not be impacted in any way, says Amazon. Their Alexa experience will not change.
Will Amazon employees hear your recordings?
Only a small fraction of 1% of Alexa requests are reviewed, says Amazon. “Training with voice recordings is why Alexa can distinguish if a customer is asking for the weather in Austin vs. Boston, or the difference between U2 and YouTube,” Raemhild explains. “It also helps ensure Alexa understands the different accents and speaking styles of our customers.”
Much of this will be handled only by AI.
“Access to internal services is highly controlled and is only granted to a limited number of employees who require these services to train and improve the service,” she continues. “Our policies strictly prohibit employee access to or use of customer data for any other reason, and our annotation process does not associate voice recordings with customer-identifiable information. And we regularly audit employee access to internal services and limit access whenever and wherever possible.”
Why is Amazon changing this policy?
It’s tied to the generative AI experiences coming soon to the new Alexa+. “AI needs this extra processing power,” says Milanesi. “Alexa will be much more conversational than she used to be, and because some of the features are now listening for your tone, you can’t get that out of a text transcript.”
Alexa will also leverage “agentic AI,” which uses sophisticated reasoning to solve queries, including pulling in from partner services to fulfill requests. For example, soon you’ll be able to instruct Alexa to book a reservation at a restaurant, order a rideshare vehicle to pick up a friend for the dinner date, and draft a text to them about the plans. The idea is to deliver a better and more holistic experience for users.
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Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of articles on personal technology, arming readers with the knowledge to protect themselves against cybersecurity threats and internet scams as well as revealing the best tips, tricks and shortcuts for computers, cellphones, apps, texting, social media and more. We rely on credentialed experts with personal experience and know-how as well as primary sources including tech companies, professional organizations and academic institutions. For this piece, Marc Saltzman tapped his 30-year experience as a technology journalist, the author of several books (including Apple Vision Pro for Dummies) and the host of the syndicated Tech It Out radio show and podcast to ensure that all information is accurate and offers the best possible advice to readers. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- CNET: “Amazon Is Canceling a Major Alexa Privacy Feature on March 28: Should You Worry?
- Metro: “Amazon Alexa users issued urgent warning ahead of ‘unforgivable’ privacy change”
- AP News: “Amazon ends little-used privacy feature that let Echo users opt out of sending recordings to company”
- USA Today: “Amazon Echo devices to soon send all Alexa requests to company cloud”
- Tech Radar: “Amazon’s big Alexa voice processing change may not be the privacy nightmare you think it is”
- Amazon: “Introducing Alexa+, the next generation of Alexa”
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