How to prevent Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant from recording your conversations

Smart virtual assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant are incredibly convenient. They can control your connected home appliances, plan your calendar, and even help you with a topic for your next blog post.  Virtual assistants are the secretary you always wanted, but they have a dark side. They are always listening and sometimes recording your conversations with them. To maintain your privacy, we will show you how you can limit these assistants and prevent them from storing your activity on the internet.

Disabling Amazon Alexa

With its retail might, Amazon has integrated Alexa into everything from thermostats to smartwatches. Not only is Alexa always listening for its trigger words, but it also is recording what you say to it. And if that isn’t bad enough, these audio clips also are uploaded to a server where they are reviewed by an algorithm and sometimes an Amazon employee. It’s creepy to think your voice is being stored online. It’s even more unsettling that employees are being paid to listen to it.

You can delete your audio recordings and turn off this human review in the settings app, so let’s start there.

Begin by opening the Alexa App on your iOS or Android device. Click the menu in the upper left corner and select “Settings.”

From settings, tap on “Alexa Privacy,” which will bring you to a screen with Amazon’s latest privacy policy and all the settings related to recording and reviewing your conversations.

Begin by deleting all existing audio recordings by tapping on “Review Voice History” and selecting the recordings you want to delete. You also can use the “deletion by voice” feature, which allows you to say, “Alexa, delete everything I said today.” This voice deletion works automatically and doesn’t require you to go into the settings every time you want to delete your history.

To turn off the human review option, return to the Alexa Privacy screen by using the back arrow or going to “Settings” > “Alexa Privacy.” Then select “Manage Your Alexa Data.”

Scroll until you see “Use Voice Recording to improve Amazon Services and to Develop New Features.” and turn off the radio button next to this option. This will disable the human review setting. As shown in the screen grab, it is enabled by default.

While you are on this “Manage Your Alexa Data” screen, you may also want to change the setting for automatically deleting the recordings. By default, this setting is turned off. Tap on the “Off” and choose between removing the recordings manually or automatically deleting recordings after 3 months or after 18 months.

Turning Off Google Assistant on iOS

Similar to Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant is available on a wide variety of Android and Google devices for your home and car. Though you cannot uninstall Google Assistant on these devices, you can disable the recording feature and delete existing audio clips.

The steps to disable Google Assistant may vary based on your device and Google app that you are using. Almost all devices store the privacy options for Google Assistant in the “Web & App Activity” screen, which can be found in app settings or your profile settings. “Web & App Activity” also is accessible online. On an iPhone running iOS 13, you’ll want to open the Google Home app or Google Assistant app.

Tap on your profile in the upper right corner to access your account settings.

Tap on “Assistant settings” if present and then select “Your data in the Assistant.” This brings you to a screen with all the activity and privacy controls for Google Assistant.

Tap on “Web & App Activity” under “Google-wide controls” to open the “Web & App Activity” screen.

First we will turn off the option to save your voice and audio recordings by tapping “Change Setting” under the Web & App Activity is on”option. Then uncheck the box next to “Include Voice and Audio recordings” and select “Pause” to confirm that you want to disable voice and audio recordings.

If you decide to keep the voice and audio recordings enabled, you can change how long these audio recordings are stored. Use the arrow to return to the  “Web & App Activity” screen. Scroll down and then select “Choose How Long to Keep.”

You can choose to delete the recordings manually or have the Google Home app automatically delete recordings after 3 months or after 18 months.

Lastly, scrolling to the bottom of the “Web & App Activity” screen, you will find a list of all your recent activity. You can delete individual activities by tapping the three dots next to each entry or deleting them day by day. Just like Alexa, Google has a “deletion by voice” feature, which allows you to say, “Hey Google, delete everything I said today.”

Hasan Saleem is a Web professional with experience in planning, launching, and operating successful Web-based ventures.

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