Amazon is curtailing a privacy-minded feature that will affect owners of certain Echo devices.
In an email sent last Friday to a number of customers, Amazon revealed that as of March 28, it will remove an opt-in setting that prevented audio of your Alexa requests from being shared with the company. Available to users with certain Echo devices, this option processes your Alexa requests locally instead of sending their recordings to the cloud.
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Though this option sounds like it should have been available to all Alexa users, it was limited to those with the Echo Dot 4th generation, Echo Show 10, and Echo Show 15 devices and only to people in the US with English set as their language. To enable this in the Alexa app, at least until March 28, select the supported Echo device and tap Settings. From there, turn on the switch for “Do Not Send Voice Recordings.”
With this option soon to be disabled, does that open up Alexa users to privacy risks?
To address such concerns, Amazon will automatically update the privacy settings for affected users to not save voice recordings, a company spokesperson told ZDNET. In this case, the recordings are still shared with Amazon. But those recordings will then be deleted after the request has been answered. Amazon will also remove any previous recordings still accessible.
Even with the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” setting turned on, your requests to Alexa have never been fully private. Yes, the audio of your conversations aren’t sent to the cloud. However, text transcripts of your requests are still shared so that Alexa can respond to you, says an Amazon help page<!–>. Further, audio of certain Alexa requests, such as making a phone call or sending a message, are still sent to the cloud.
Another feature requiring cloud access is voice ID, which helps Alexa recognize your voice to provide more personalized responses. When you set up a voice ID, the audio recordings that teach Alexa your voice are shared with Amazon. If you don’t allow your voice recordings to be sent to Amazon’s cloud, voice ID won’t work.
Sharing your requests will be necessary if you want to use Alexa and your Echo as fully as possible, for better or worse. But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong to be concerned about your privacy, especially given Amazon’s track record.
Also: Everything you need to know about Alexa+, Amazon’s new generative AI assistant
In 2023, the company was fined $25 million after the FTC and DOJ accused it of misleading parents and users about Alexa’s data deletion practices. In 2021, researchers discovered that only a small number of Alexa skills had a privacy policy at the time. In 2019, a report found that Amazon employees were eavesdropping on Alexa queries to enhance its accuracy. That same year, the company acknowledged that voice recordings were held forever unless users manually removed them.
And what about now? To try to placate customers with privacy worries, an Amazon spokesperson shared the following statement:
“The Alexa experience is designed to protect our customers’ privacy and keep their data secure, and that’s not changing. We’re focusing on the privacy tools and controls that our customers use most and work well with generative AI experiences that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud. Customers can continue to choose from a robust set of tools and controls, including the option to not save their voice recordings at all. We’ll continue learning from customer feedback and building privacy features on their behalf.”
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Privacy will be another important factor as Amazon launches its new Alexa+ option. Tapping into AI, the new service will be able to handle requests and chats more like a ChatGPT or Google Gemini. That means it will respond with a more natural cadence, conduct longer conversations, handle multiple prompts, generate content, and process documents. And if you want all that, giving up a little bit of your privacy may be the price you’ll have to pay.
Below is the email that Amazon sent to impacted Echo users:
Dear Echo Customer,
We are reaching out to let you know that the Alexa feature ‘Do Not Send Voice Recordings’ that you enabled on your supported Echo device(s) will no longer be available beginning March 28th, 2025. This feature allowed compatible Echo devices to process the audio of Alexa requests locally on device. As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature.
If you do not take action, your Alexa Settings will automatically be updated to ‘Don’t save recordings.’ This means that, starting on March 28th, your voice recordings will be sent to and processed in the cloud, and they will be deleted after Alexa processes your requests. Any previously saved voice recordings will also be deleted. If your voice recordings setting is updated to ‘Don’t save recordings,’ voice ID will not work and you will not be able to create a voice ID for individual users to access more personalized features. If you do not want to set your voice recordings setting to ‘Don’t save recordings,’ please follow these steps before March 28th:
- Open the Alexa App on your Mobile Phone
- Go to Settings > Device Settings and select the device where this feature is enabled
- Select ‘Do Not Send Voice Recordings’ from the menu
- Disable the setting
The Alexa experience is designed to protect your privacy and keep your data secure, and that’s not changing. Alexa voice requests are always encrypted in transit to Amazon’s secure cloud, which was designed with layers of security protections to keep customer information safe. Customers can continue to choose from a robust set of controls by visiting the Alexa Privacy dashboard online or navigating to More > Alexa Privacy in the Alexa app. Learn more about these features and how we’re keeping your information secure at the Alexa Privacy Hub (https://www.amazon.com/alexaprivacyhub–>).
If you have any questions, please contact our customer service team: https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us/foresight/hubgateway<!–>.
Thank you for being an Alexa customer.
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