How to remove Amazon Alexa surveys for privacy

Amazon devices like the Echo store a copy of everything your Alexa asks for. This means that a whole collection of voice recordings has been recorded for each request or command you have given to Amazon’s voice assistant.

Amazon says that Alexa only starts recording when it thinks you said the password (the default is ‘Alexa’), so it does not listen all the time. But it sometimes uses a small sample of voice recordings to train the voice assistant to work better, which in rare cases means people can review the recordings to understand if Alexa is misinterpreting a request.

If you use Amazon Alexa a lot, it’s worth knowing how to store the recordings or use them for training. Here’s what you do.

There are several ways to view your Amazon Alexa voice history. I prefer to use the Alexa app on my phone as it is always in my pocket but you can also visit Amazon’s website. Here’s what you need to do on your phone:

• Download the Alexa app for iPhone or Android.
• Open the Alexa app.
• Tap “More” at the bottom right.
• Tap “Activity”.
• Select the “Voice History” tab at the top.
• Select “All History” and “All Devices” next to “Display”.

Now you see a list of everything Alexa has recorded. Browse by playing this snippet of audio recorded by Alexa.

The easiest way to delete everything at once is by simply saying “Alexa, delete everything I’ve already said.” You can change it to “Alexa, delete what I just said” to delete the last question you asked, or “Alexa, delete everything I said today” to delete everything you said in one day .

However, there is a bonus setting you need to know about. You can also set Alexa to automatically delete everything after a specified time. I set mine up to remove everything older than every 3 months. To set it up:

• Download the Alexa app for iPhone or Android.
• Open the Alexa app.
• Tap “More” at the bottom right.
• Tap “Settings”
• Choose “Alexa Privacy”
• Tap “Manage your Alexa data”
• Change the setting under “Choose how long you want to store recordings” to your desired time frame, whether indefinitely, for 18 months, for three months or never.

Finally, you can prevent your surveys from being used by Amazon to train Alexa. Amazon says that ‘only a very small fraction of voice recordings are reviewed manually’ and that if you turn them off, voice recognition and new features may not work well for you. ‘

I got it off and it works fine. Maybe you want it off too. To do it:

• Download the Alexa app for iPhone or Android.
• Open the Alexa app.
• Tap “More” at the bottom right.
• Tap “Settings”
• Choose “Alexa Privacy”
• Tap “Manage your Alexa data”
• Scroll down and uncheck the “Help to Improve Alexa” button below.
• Make sure the family members’ bottom buttons (if you linked them to your account) are also off.