Screenshot: Pranay Parab
Amazon also keeps a copy of each one of your Alexa voice commands, sounds detected by Alexa-powered smart home devices, and the complete history of your smart home device usage. If that sounds like a bit too much, you can go to Amazon’s Alexa Privacy Settings page and start deleting everything.
That URL should take you to a page titled Manage Your Alexa Data. On that page, under Voice Recordings, you can turn on Enable deletion by voice. This lets you use Alexa to delete your Alexa history by using commands such as “Alexa, delete everything I said today.” Next, click the right-arrow next to Choose how long to save recordings, select Don’t save recordings, and click Confirm twice.
Now go to Smart Home Device History and click the right-arrow next to Choose how long to save history. The lowest you can go is three months; and sadly, there’s no option to stop saving smart home device history completely. The option right below that is next best thing—One-time deletion of all history. Select that and click the red Delete button.
Next, head over to Detected Sounds History and click the right-arrow next to Choose how long to save history. Once again, the best you can do is Save history for 3 months.
You can then go to the Help improve Alexa section and disable Use of voice recordings. This will stop Amazon from using your recordings to improve features and from being manually reviewed by Amazon employees. The risk here is that Alexa may be less accurate at detecting your commands. Finally, under Use messages to improve transcriptions, flip the button next to your name to change turn this feature off.
