Recently, Amazon
announced new Alexa privacy controls, alongside its launch of a bizarre flying
Ring indoor camera drone. So, what’s new in the privacy controls of Amazon
Alexa?
Now you can configure Alexa not to save any of your voice
recordings, and none of your voice recordings will get saved. This is
definitely a much more advanced option compared to what it was previously. The
auto-deletion can be opted only after three or 18 months. The settings for the
same can be found in the Alexa app. Just go to Settings, tap on More, select
alexa Privacy, and then move to the Manage Your Alexa Data Menu. Here, you need
to select Automatically delete recordings.
No doubt you will get a warning message that deleting the
recordings “May degrade Alexa’s ability to understand and respond,” but it will
hardly make any difference in the functioning of Alexa.
But supposing your Alexa devices become unresponsive, you always
have the option to switch back to three months, 18 months, or only when you
deleted them.
Even after you delete all of your voice recordings, all the
Alexa request transcripts will still be there for 30 days before they get
deleted permanently. However, you can also delete them manually before 30 days,
if required. You can do it by going to More Settings , and selecting the Alexa
Privacy. Tap on Review Voice History and then you need to select the date
range. You get all the options for deletion like today, yesterday, this week,
this month, and also if required, custom. Once selected the data for deletion,
if you have “Enable deletion by voice” turned on, you can ask Alexa to delete
the selected data by saying “Alexa delete everything I’ve said.”
Stop Alexa from Getting
Triggered
Smart speakers getting triggered when you haven’t intended for
it is a problem every one of us might have encountered at times. You cannot
make use of any personal wake word; instead, you have to choose from among the
four provided by Amazon. They are Alexa, Amazon, Computer and Echo.
You may make changes in the wake words according to the device
you are using. No matter whatever wake word you have opted for, always keep in
mind, if you have turned on the follow-up mode, your wake-up word will be
disabled by default, and your device will wait and listen for five seconds more
after it answers and it will respond even without the need of the wake word.
Marshall Lyne is a self-professed security expert; he has been
making the people aware of the security threats. His passion is to write about
Cyber security, cryptography, malware, social engineering, internet and new
media. He writes for Norton security products at norton.com/setup.
