Tech

How to know if Alexa is recording our conversations

Does it record you or does it not record you?

There are two types of users: those who would put an Amazon Echo even in the bathroom and those who think that it is nothing more than a version cuckoo of the HAL 9000. Buying a first Echo or a HomePod can even create a family conflict, since not everyone in the house may agree to introduce such an element into the household. As a curiosity, older people seem to have fewer taboos towards these technologies than younger people.

One of the reasons why virtual voice assistants have earned some rejection from the public is the difficulty in knowing how they treat our data. Although manufacturers have already explained actively and passively how their devices work, there is still a lot of mistrust. And this is where we ask the question. doAlexa records our conversations without our permission? Is she an ally or is it something similar to putting a KGB agent in our living room?

Alexa can’t record you without your permission

Alexa

According to Amazon engineers, your device Alexa is only allowed to record once she hears your wake word, which can be Echo, Alexa or Amazon. Once the device detects the word, its blue light will turn onand that’s when it will start recording.

And now you’re wondering how Alexa can hear you if she’s not recording. Well, actually, every microphone is registering vibrations even if it is not connected. Alexa—and all assistants—are able to recognize that wake word. Only after activationthe device has permission to record your voice and send it to Amazon servers, since the requests we make to Alexa are not processed locally.

How can I see what Alexa has recorded?

Saving the audio of every user who talks to Alexa would be unproductive. That’s why Alexa converts everything you ask her to plain text. If you want to see the Registration of data that Alexa has been collecting, you can do it in a very easy way. Open the Alexa app on your mobile phone, go to ‘Plus‘ and then to ‘Exercise‘. In the second tab you will have the ‘voice history‘, which is a record of all your conversations with Alexa, only transcribed.

Within this record, you can remove all entries if you wish. If you take a look at this history, you can clearly see that Alexa also detects when it has been activated in the wrong way. In this case, the audio clip will be available.

So no, Alexa doesn’t record you all day. She can only do this after hearing her wake word. In the event that you want to remove any records from Amazon’s servers, you can do so quite easily.

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