As Julia Roberts says to Andy Garcia in Ocean’s 11, “someone’s always listening.”
That’s never been truer than the current cultural moment we find ourselves at in 2019, with the world of Siri, Alexa and all manner of other devices responding to our voice command, and always listening and harvesting the thing’s that we are saying.
Last month’s Guardian article which detailed the listening’s and processing of sensitive information by Apple workers, via unwanted triggering of the Siri function by smartphone users, caused alarm and resulted in Apple suspending their program of human employees analyzing data collected by voice control.
Alexa followed suit with this move – to an extent.
People now have the option to opt-out of having their voice command requests being potentially used for data research by workers (regardless of the activation being un-wanted or wanted).
To opt-out of having your data reviewed completely, you need to head into the settings, then ‘Alexa Privacy’, and finally the ‘Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa’ area of the back-end before you are able to expressly deny access to any of your recordings.
This process aside, you can still never be sure that no-one will be listening when you activate Alexa. Thankfully, at least there are still some ways to at least avoid sending unwanted conversations to other people meaning too, so as to minimise any unwanted listenership in some private moments.
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It might be a logistical trek, but getting through all the red tape to switch off the button is more than worth it in a day and age when information sharing is becoming increasingly common, and invasive.
Despite this option, there’s still the fact that Alexa can allow strangers into your home to drop off packages – but at least it’s a start.
Check out this walk-through guide of how to switch off your Alexa from sending your data to employees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKF7ovwcles
