We are at a time when any application, OS or device that we use in our day to day life supposese approve certain conditions that almost completely override our privacy, but this in some cases reaches unsuspected extremes and goes above any norm without us being able to do anything to prevent it.
In this case, what we are saying is that after several multinationals confirmed that they listen to our conversations with virtual assistants, the stir that arose is really great. The last company that we know of that has a team of human people to review some of the conversations with the assistant is Apple, yes, Apple with Siri also listens to us and some of these conversations are heard by a team of the company ...
But today we are not going to talk about Apple or Google, which would be two of the companies together with Amazon that has access to our conversations and can record, listen, save or do whatever they think appropriate with them. Today we are going to talk about Amazon and Alexa.
Before getting into the subject we have to take into account several things and that is that the moment we start using a device that contains Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant or whatever, the company behind can hear, record or even store the data that is recorded in it. In the case of Apple after actively and passively denying this, an article from the well-known medium The Guardian revealed that the company had a team of people reviewing some of the conversations to improve the system and they decided to announce the temporary suspension of the team so the rest of the companies can join the bandwagon and in the case of Amazon with Alexa they offer the option for users.
You can now unsubscribe from the review program on Alexa
This is something that could not be done before the stir raised in Apple with Siri, so it is partly good that all users know it. The Alexa review team has not stopped still seeing the conversations with the assistant, This must be made clear from the beginning but now we can unsubscribe from the review program in a very simple way.
It is true that we could modify some permissions and eliminate some of the conversations that we have had with the assistant at some point, although it is true that now the options for this are much clearer and easier to use, we can also prevent our recordings from reaching directly the company with these steps.
This is how we are going to deactivate the analysis of our conversations with Alexa
Having said all the above, it is very easy to get to it and we will see that now it is much easier for the user to access directly to the configuration of these options and disable analysis of our conversations with Alexa. To do this we simply have to access our mobile device, whether it is an iPhone or an Android, and directly access the Settings of the Amazon Alexa app:
- We enter the app and click on Alexa Account
- Now we have to click on Alexa Privacy
- And finally, click on Manage the way your data helps us improve Alexa
Now we have to disable option which says: «If this option is activated, your voice recordings could be used to develop new functions and could be manually reviewed to help improve our services. Only a small number of voice recordings are manually reviewed »
In the case of iPhone users we have to perform the following steps:
- We access the Settings menu
- Click on Alexa Privacy
- We select Check voice history and then we select Activate voice deletion
In this step we have to say: "Delete everything I said today" to delete your voice recordings of the day. You can also delete the voice recording you just made by saying Delete what I just said.