Alexa is getting creepier. Take this one step to improve your privacy.
- ️Tue Mar 18 2025
It’s a good time to revisit the terms of your relationship with Alexa.
If you own one of Amazon’s voice assistant gadgets, everything you say to Alexa is beamed to Amazon’s cloud and saved forever on the company’s computer systems. Amazon uses those Alexa voice recordings to answer your commands and train its artificial intelligence.
Now Amazon is removing a setting that gave some Alexa device owners a more privacy-preserving option. Few people used that setting, but the change is a reminder that Alexa is a data hog and likely growing more so.
I’ll walk you through what Amazon is changing and help you evaluate how to live with an Alexa device without losing complete control of your privacy.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Even if you don’t own an Alexa device, Amazon shows the potential personal toll in the age of AI. Digital bits of ourselves are being fed into corporations’ computers, and we can’t know how they might be misused. We may need personal empowerment and regulation to wrest back some control.
What Alexa is changing
When your email, photos or Alexa voice commands are in the cloud, that means they’re saved on someone else’s computers. That’s useful but comes with risks.
You don’t know when humans are listening to your recordings saved in Amazon’s cloud. You don’t know whether Amazon is accidentally sending your voice recordings to a stranger or saving what you say even if you don’t trigger Alexa with a “wake” word. That’s all happened before.
What’s new are reports in recent days that Amazon, as of March 28, will ditch one option to limit some of Alexa’s privacy risks.
Amazon said it’s focusing on privacy controls that its customers use the most and that work well with the planned debut of a revamped AI-powered Alexa.
People in the United States who own a handful of Amazon device models have been able to change a setting so some commands like checking the weather are handled by the computer brain on the Alexa device. Voice commands aren’t sent to Amazon’s cloud, although text of the command may be.
Amazon said very few people used this privacy setting. Removing it is still a step in the wrong direction for Alexa’s data hoarding.
When Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler looked at all the Alexa recordings that Amazon saved from inside his home, there were thousands of voice files, from the mundane (setting timers) to the unnerving, including family discussions about medication and a friend conducting a business deal.
How to improve your Alexa privacy
Top tip: Stop your Alexa device from saving your voice recordings. You get few benefits, and mostly potential risks, from Amazon saving in its cloud everything you say to Alexa.
To do this from the Alexa phone app:
Settings → Alexa Privacy → Manage Your Alexa Data → Don’t save recordings. (Amazon has detailed instructions here.)
Why you should do this: Companies collect and save as much data as they can about you because there’s little downside for them. But there is some for you.
“The more you save today, the more that can be breached tomorrow,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy advocacy group. “Whether you’re worried about hackers breaking in or the government forcing its way in, you can protect yourself down the road by disabling data retention now.”
Amazon says that if it doesn’t save your audio recordings, Alexa’s software can’t distinguish among the voices of people in your household.
What Amazon can do: It would be better if Amazon did not save recordings from people’s Alexa devices, period.
Technology companies say their privacy settings give you control, but that lets them appear to be good guys while they also know few people will change the standard setting.
Amazon said that “the Alexa experience is designed to protect our customers’ privacy and keep their data secure, and that’s not changing.”
Other privacy-improvement steps:
Consider moving your Alexa device to less intimate areas of your home. If you can, Cahn recommended not putting an Alexa device in parts of your home where recordings could be compromising or embarrassing, such as a bedroom or bathroom.
Unplug your Alexa device when it’s feasible. Consider doing so if you have guests over or are having intimate family discussions about your finances or health.
If you’re handy, you can use a light-switch-controlled wall outlet to flip your Alexa device on and off, suggested Rory Mir, associate director of community organizing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation consumer advocacy group.
Consider ditching your Alexa device. Some of you will say that if people are worried about privacy, don’t own a home gadget with an always-listening microphone. It’s a reasonable point but not an entirely fair one.
You should not have to choose between digital conveniences or autonomy over your personal information. We deserve both.