Amazon web site, displaying the -Manage Voice Recordings- window.
Shows how to delete Alexa history voice recordings for those who do not want a lot of voice history hanging around. Clearing these is fairly straight forward. But erasing them does present some problems, which we discuss below.
Each time you speak a request or command to your Alexa speaker, the virtual assistant records your voice. It then sends that data up to Amazon servers in the cloud. These recordings help the assistant “learn” your ways of talking. They detail your accent and how you say specific words. With these, Alexa grows better able to understand you over time. Plus, the more saved voice recordings, the more accurately Alexa gets what you ask of her. So, the quality of her answers improves over time as well. These recordings thus, help create a more pleasant experience with your speaker. But saved voice snippits might create privacy concerns for some. They worry that some unauthorized person could listen to them.
But the drawback to this is that Alexa currently saves this audio history for months, or years even. So a court could subpoena these audio snippets if someone every accuses you of a crime. Thus these recordings might incriminate you, fairly or not.
Also, consider that Alexa may record more than just your requests. Indeed, any time the Echo speakers think that they hears someone say, “Alexa…,” “Amazon,…” ‘Computer,…” or “Echo…,” it “wakes up,” and starts recording, and in some cases, saving the audio. While we ind that these false wake ups occur rarely. they do indeed make saved recordings in your Alexa history. These do not contain any questions / commands per se. But they can have private conversations. So, be careful of what you say while Alexa is listening.
Now the microphones in the Alexa speakers are quite sensitive with that far field technology behind them. Thus they can record any sounds. They pick up your television playing and what you’re saying on the phone. So they can record distant conversations and any other sounds within several seconds of when the speaker wakes up. So, for these reasons, you may wish to periodically erase some or all of these voice recordings.
Remember though, again, that removing them also erases what Alexa remembers about how you speak. Fortunately, keeping or deleting them is your choice. Indeed there are definitely pros and cons for each choice. But if you choose to erase the voice history then read on for instruction on how.
To delete your Alexa Echo voice recording history, follow the procedure below.
Use a web browser in either a phone, tablet, or desktop computer. No matter, so long as the device can access your Amazon account.
Amazon then prompts for your Amazon user Id and password.
Once you log in, you get the Manage Your Content and Devices page.
Find this tab on the upper center of the page, as shown in the last picture.
You then see something like the page displayed next.
Alexa keeps a separate voice history for each device. So to delete it all, you must repeat the following steps for each device you wish to purge.
We find no way to run a global device voice recordings delete. Thus we could not remove the voice recordings from all speakers at once. So, rather than purging all the voice history, we delete here the Alexa history from our Living Room device only.
In this demo, we tap our Living Room Echo Dot. This is the button with the ellipses in it, to the left of the highlighted device in the last picture.
Then, a pop-up window appears. It shows a picture of our device and its name, as seen in the next screen shot.
Do this if you’re sure you wish to go ahead with the device history purge. If not, tap the close (X) button. So find it in the top right hand corner of the Manage Voice Recordings window.
But if you chose to proceed, a message appears. It tells that voice recordings history delete is in progress.
Then, when that’s complete, a Deletion Completed Successfully message appears briefly.
The system then returns you to the Manage Your Content and Devices page.
One way to do this is via the Alexa app on your tablet. We did not find a way to look at your device voice history entries on the Amazon website itself. But we could also check the history in the Alexa app, as follows.
Our copy of the app we find on the third page of the Home screen on our iOS iPad tablet.
You should then get the Alexa app Home screen, like to the picture next.
This brings up the Settings screen, as shown next.
The Alexa Request History screen then displays, as shown next.
If you only have one Alexa device on your Amazon account, this screen shows no entries.
But if you have more than one Alexa Echo speaker, you’ll still see the request history for your other devices. Note that we deleted the history for our Living Room device. So those recordings no longer display in this list. Also, we scrolled all the way through this list to check that all Living Room entries are no more. But our Bedroom device entries remain.
Again, to delete ALL the recordings, we’d have had to also run the above steps on our Bedroom device. A complete deletion of the recordings on all devices would be the best way to protect privacy. Be secure. Just keep in mind though that deleting these also makes Alexa forget how you speak. So without a rich voice history, she may not hear your requests as well.
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