Is Alexa Always Listening To Me?
All Echo devices constantly monitor input from the microphone for the wake works such as Alexa or Computer. That means Alexa is effectively always listening to everything within range of the Echo microphone. While this may raise many justifiable privacy concerns, it a core part of Alexa's ability to respond to your voice. Without this functionality, the voice element would be useless and you would have to control everything from the app on your phone.
If you don’t want Alexa to listen at all, you can turn off the microphone on your Echo device with the button on the top. If you want to use it, you have to tap the microphone button again on the device, say the device’s wake word and the command or question you want it to run, and then press the mute button again.
Does Alexa Record My Conversations?
Alexa regularly records your commands and uploads the audio files to Amazon for analysis, refining, and other purposes. It’s technically only supposed to do this with commands and questions following the wake word. But anyone who has owned an Echo device for even a short amount of time will know Alexa tends to misinterpret random snippets of unrelated conversations as its wake word, or even when you're talking "about her" and not "to her".
While Alexa is always listening, it isn’t constantly recording, and it doesn't record conversations. However, it definitely can record conversations accidentally if it thinks it you have spoken to it with a wake word. By default, these snippets are uploaded to Amazon’s servers right alongside actual commands and questions.
How to Stop Alexa From Uploading Conversations
If you want to use your Alexa without pushing the microphone button all the time, but you don’t like the idea of people listening to your commands, questions, and conversations- you can disable the upload function from within the Alexa app.
Your Alexa doesn’t have the computing capabilities to understand and respond to questions and commands by itself. It records then uploads every question or command you pose to Amazon’s servers for processing. There is no way to stop that, as its a requirement of the device. By performing the following steps however, you will instruct Amazon to delete your recordings immediately after processing and never to provide them to human workers for analysis.
Open the Alexa app, and tap More.
Tap Settings.
Tap Alexa Privacy.
Tap Manage Your Alexa Data.
Tap Choose how long to save recordings.
Select Don’t save recordings and tap Confirm.
Scroll down to the Help improve Alexa section, and switch the Use of voice recordings toggle to the off position.
Tap TURN OFF.
If you use Alexa to send messages, switch the toggle or toggles in the Use messages to improve transcription section off as well
Hopefully this helps ease your Smart Home privacy concerns. While our information may always been under threat, we must do all we can to safeguard it. If you have any questions or queries regarding your smart home, or thinking of getting one installed- get in touch and see if we can help. Spartan IT Systems. https://spartanitsystems.co.uk/smart-homes