Dozens of companies would spy on your conversations with Alexa. How to Stop Alexa from Spying on You?
Privacy isn’t Amazon’s forte when it comes to Alexa. Smart speakers have not only opened the door for the company to spy on you but on more than one occasion vulnerabilities have been discovered that expose users’ privacy. The most recent topic concerns advertising and how How Amazon uses your voice to show you ads.
The study Your Echoes Are Heard: Tracking, Profiling, and Ad Targeting in Amazon’s Smart Speaker Ecosystemexposes how technology collects data from your interactions with Alexa and shares it with up to 41 advertising partners. By giving instructions to your Echo, Amazon will use this information to display targeted advertisements.
The researchers created nine-person profiles to analyze the percentage of targeted ads. With the help of a Raspberry Pi router, an Echo speaker and the Alexa Voice Services SDK, they discovered that our interactions with Alexa are collected by Amazon and third parties, including advertising and tracking services.
Amazon processes your voice data and uses it to deliver targeted advertisements
According to the study, interaction with smart speakers leads to up to 30x higher ad bids by advertisers. Amazon processes voice data to infer user interests and uses it to deliver targeted advertisements on and off the platform.
Academics from the University of Washington, UC Davis, UC Irvine and Northeastern University have determined that Amazon’s practices are inconsistent with its privacy rhetoric. Company interference in advertising interests is a violation of the Use Policies.
In summary, we found strong evidence that smart speaker interactions are used for ad targeting purposes, and that ad targeting involves significant sharing of data between multiple parties.
The study suggests the need for more transparency and control for users. Amazon should redesign its platform to improve privacy for its consumers, as well as open it up so developers and auditors know exactly how much data is being shared.
How to stop Alexa from spying on you?
Amazon has confirmed The edge What if you use our interactions with Alexa to display targeted advertisements although this is common when we use their online store or online music service? Diffusion. A company spokeswoman said Amazon does not share voice recordings with developers or third parties without the customer’s consent.
If you have an Echo speaker, Alexa can know everything about you. There is currently a way to enjoy a more private and secure experience by doing settings in privacy options. All you need is to access your Amazon account from the web and follow these steps.
- Go to the Amazon website and log in.
- Once inside, click on the option My account.
- Find the section Manage content and devices.
- Go to Manage Settings inside Alexa Privacy.
- A new screen will show you some options in a sidebar on the left.
- Press on Check voice history.
- This page will give you tools to navigate the recordings Alexa has of you. You can also see generated transcripts, but there is also a button to play the recordings.
- At the end of each recording, you will see a button to delete the record which you can use to get rid of it.
- However, if in the date range you select all the stories the button will be activated Delete all records from all history; With this feature, you will delete everything Alexa has stored about you.
