How to get Amazon to delete your Alexa recordings, and stop them listening in to your Alexa chats

Amazon Alexa customers worried about their privacy can now choose whether or not contractors listen to the recordings of their exchanges with Alexa. 

Currently, Alexa — like Siri, Cortana and Google Assistant — records every exchange with Alexa whether it’s via phone or one of the Echo devices. These are listened to by contractors as a way of assessing how good the assistant is at understanding user requests, and whether its language understanding is up to scratch.

Google and Apple have both announced plans to stop this process, and while Amazon will be continuing for now, they are giving Echo owners the opportunity to make their recordings private. 

Related: Which Amazon Echo speaker should you buy? 

Want to find out how? Here’s how you can ensure Alexa stays in line and treats you right. 

Go to your settings menu for Alexa, tap on the Alexa Privacy link, and then you’ll need to select the “Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa”. It’s an easy toggle from here. 

However, while you’re doing that, you can also delete your voice recordings from Alexa via either the Alexa app on your phone, or the Amazon website. In the same way, you select Alexa Privacy, before selecting “Review Voice History.” 

From here you have the option to delete all recordings, but you can also turn on the feature for enabling deletion by voice on a toggle switch. Then, you can delete recordings by saying “Alexa, delete what I just said” or even “Alexa, delete what I just said for the last week” giving you more granular control over your voice data. This voice deletion system was actually introduced back in May, but this recent privacy scare is a good reminder that you should be careful about where your private information is stored. Few places will be good enough to let you delete your recordings by voice, too. Take advantage.