Amazon Alexa's voice-command history is now much easier to delete
"Alexa, delete everything I said today.”
Following recent privacy concerns suggesting that Amazon employees may be listening to your recorded Alexa conversations, the online retail giant has announced new voice commands that will give users more control over their recordings.
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In its newly launched 'Alexa Privacy Hub', Amazon states that users may now scrap their recorded voice history daily by saying "Alexa, delete everything I said today”. A second command, “Alexa, delete what I just said”, will roll out within the next month.
Of course, there are some necessary steps that must be taken before the commands will actually work: users must first access their Alexa Privacy Settings, click on 'Review Voice History' and flip the 'Enable deletion by voice' toggle to 'on'.
There is one small catch though, as enabling the feature will allow "anyone with access to your Alexa devices" to delete your Alexa voice recordings, which doesn't sound like a big deal to us.
Alexa device owners may also use the same page to access a drop down menu that allows them to delete voice data from specific dates or even their entire voice recording history – a much easier alternative to the previous method of deleting voice recordings one-by-one via the Alexa app.
While it's nice to see Amazon be more transparent about its practices and give customers more control over their data, we have to wonder whether it will be enough to assuage users' privacy concerns in the long run.
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Stephen primarily covers phones and entertainment for TechRadar's Australian team, and has written professionally across the categories of tech, film, television and gaming in both print and online for over a decade. He's obsessed with smartphones, televisions, consoles and gaming PCs, and has a deep-seated desire to consume all forms of media at the highest quality possible.
He's also likely to talk a person’s ear off at the mere mention of Android, cats, retro sneaker releases, travelling and physical media, such as vinyl and boutique Blu-ray releases. Right now, he's most excited about QD-OLED technology, The Batman and Hellblade 2: Senua's Saga.