If own Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant, you may have wondered whether the device is spying on you, but you likely got over your fears because it’s just so darn convenient. Now you have something new to worry about. Amazon recently announced a change in the way Alexa processes information. Beginning March 28, 2025, Amazon no longer offers the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” feature on Echo devices, moving all of your voice recordings to its cloud server, whether you like it or not. How big of a deal is this and will Amazon be listening to everything you say and keeping that information indefinitely? The short answer is yes, unless you manually choose to delete them off the Amazon cloud via the Alexa Privacy dashboard. Those who don’t want their audio-based requests uploaded to Amazon’s cloud should not use an Alexa-enabled device, because that feature can no longer be turned off. Let’s be clear here — Amazon is not SPYING on you, but they are LISTENING. While Amazon assures its customers that their conversations are encrypted, if that information fell into the wrong hands, the perpetrators could use it to train AI deepfakes…….but then so could every single video you post on social media. Amazon says the change was made to make Alexa more conversational in order to deliver a better experience for users.
