Alexa Privacy Settings: How to Control What Gets Recorded

If you have an Echo speaker or another Alexa device in your home, Amazon has been recording and storing your voice requests by default. Alexa privacy settings let you see that history, delete it, and decide how long Amazon keeps future recordings around. Here's where those controls live, what they actually do, and where they stop short.

How do I access Alexa's privacy settings?

Amazon keeps most of the relevant controls in one place it calls the Alexa Privacy Hub. You can reach it two ways: through the Alexa app, or through a web page. Amazon describes the app path as going into "the Alexa app > More Menu > Settings > Alexa Privacy > Manage Your Alexa Data, or by visiting Alexa Privacy Settings online."

There's also a voice shortcut. Amazon says that when you ask, "Alexa, how do I review my privacy settings?" Alexa will "send you a direct link in the Alexa app to your Alexa Privacy Settings."

How do I review and delete my voice recordings?

Once you're in Manage Your Alexa Data, you can look at a running history of what Alexa heard and answered. Amazon's deletion options are more flexible than a single "clear all" button. According to Amazon, "you can still delete voice recordings one by one, by date range, by Alexa-enabled device, all at once, or choose to automatically delete your voice recordings on an ongoing three- or 18-month basis."

There's also a spoken shortcut for a full wipe. Amazon writes: "If you would like to delete all the previously saved voice recordings associated with your account, you can simply say, 'Alexa, delete everything I've said.'"

What does the "don't save recordings" setting actually do?

This is the setting most people mean when they ask how to turn off Alexa recording. It doesn't stop Alexa from processing your voice — it still has to hear and interpret your request to respond. What changes is what happens afterward.

Amazon explains that "you can now choose whether or not to save your voice recordings. If you choose not to save your voice recordings, they will be automatically deleted after Alexa processes your request. All previously saved recordings will also be deleted." But there's a catch: "you will still be able to review the transcripts of your Alexa requests for 30 days before we begin automatically deleting them."

In practice, that means text transcripts of what you said still sit on Amazon's servers for a month even after you've told Alexa not to save the audio. Turning this setting on removes the voice clips faster, but it does not make your interactions with Alexa invisible to Amazon the moment they happen.

How do I stop Amazon from training its algorithms on my recordings?

There isn't a single, clearly labeled toggle in the Alexa app that Amazon's own materials describe step by step for opting out of this kind of data use. What's been established instead is a legal limit on what Amazon is allowed to do with certain recordings — a requirement imposed on Amazon by regulators, not a setting you can find or toggle in the app.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice brought a case against Amazon over how it handled children's Alexa recordings. The agencies required Amazon "to overhaul its deletion practices and implement stringent privacy safeguards to settle charges the company violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule) and deceived parents and users of the Alexa voice assistant service about its data deletion practices." The complaint said Amazon "kept sensitive voice and geolocation data for years, and used it for its own purposes," including training its algorithms, while blocking parents from getting that data deleted.

The settlement requires that "Amazon will be required to delete inactive child accounts and certain voice recordings and geolocation information and will be prohibited from using such data to train its algorithms." That's a legal restriction on a specific category of data, not a general app setting you flip — but it's the strongest guarantee currently on record that some of your (or your kids') recordings can't be fed into Amazon's training pipeline.

What is Amazon's new on-device encryption, and does it fix Alexa privacy?

Amazon has been talking up a new encryption approach across its device lineup, and it's worth being precise about what it covers. The feature making headlines, called TAKE (Throw Away the Key Encryption), is not an Alexa voice feature — it's a Ring camera feature. The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes it as designed "to cut back on the amount of video content available to the company, and thus potentially available to law enforcement."

Even within that narrower scope, EFF's analysis found real limits. To make smart alerts and video search work, Ring's cloud servers temporarily hold the decryption keys: "with TAKE, in order to decrypt footage to offer these features, Ring gets access to footage stored in the cloud for 24 hours. TAKE adds some small measures using secure enclaves to make base key material harder to directly export, but keys are still released to services that can be modified." EFF's conclusion: "in practice, that makes the system as a whole barely different from encryption at rest where the server holds the keys... still not even close to the privacy protections of end-to-end encryption."

That distinction matters because of who holds the keys. EFF notes that because Ring, not the user, still manages key rotation, "it's technically still possible for Ring to alter its current practice if compelled to do so by law enforcement." Real end-to-end encryption works differently: the company never holds the keys at all, which "also means law enforcement can't demand the service retain keys or choose not to rotate them." For more on what that stronger protection actually guarantees, see our explainer on end-to-end encryption. EFF says TAKE doesn't offer that level of protection, and adds that "beyond a white paper, 'trust us' is the only level of verification they're offering outside observers."

The takeaway for Alexa users: a new encryption feature on Ring cameras doesn't change how your voice recordings are stored, reviewed, or deleted. Your Alexa privacy posture still comes down to the Manage Your Alexa Data settings, not Amazon's broader encryption marketing.

Checklist: lock down your Alexa privacy settings

1. Open the Alexa app and go to More > Settings > Alexa Privacy > Manage Your Alexa Data, or visit the Alexa Privacy Settings page online.
2. Review your voice history by date and by device to see what's actually been recorded.
3. Delete recordings you don't want kept — one at a time, by date range, by device, or all at once.
4. Decide on a retention setting: don't save recordings at all, or auto-delete on a rolling 3-month or 18-month basis.
5. If you turn off saving recordings, remember transcripts still linger for 30 days before they're removed — delete them yourself in Manage Your Alexa Data if you want them gone sooner.
6. Say "Alexa, delete everything I've said" for a fast full wipe of your account's voice history.
7. If children use Alexa in your home, know that federal rules now bar Amazon from using certain retained kids' recordings to train its algorithms, and require deletion of inactive child accounts and related data.
8. Don't mistake Amazon's Ring encryption news for a fix to Alexa voice privacy — the two systems are separate, and even the camera-side encryption has documented limits.

None of these settings make Alexa stop listening for its wake word, and none of them guarantee Amazon can never be compelled to hand over data. What they do is shrink how much of your voice history sits on Amazon's servers, and for how long.